Funny Business
by Doctor Harley Quinn
Summary: Some days, being the Joker's harlequin helper is as glamorous a job as it sounds—schmoozing with big names, acting as the right hand of the most powerful man in the city, and the like—but more often, Harley gets the feeling that she's only there because the Lost Boys need a mother. Even one as shabbily suited to the job as she is. [Bad Jokes 2.5]
1. Occupational Hazards

**Funny Business**

* * *

 **Opening Notes** : The usual disclaimer applies; I don't own this general Batman playground and I am making no money, but don't try to pass off my work as yours because super uncool, etc etc. This falls roughly fourth in the Bad Jokes series for the time being (more on that after the story). I assume at this point you know the drill re: setting and background; if you don't, it'd probably be wise to click back to my pen name and start at the beginning of the series.

The rating generally covers bad people behaving badly and specifically covers a situation that could be read as dubcon typical of an abusive relationship founded on deceit and manipulation. Forewarned is forearmed, etc.

I apologize in advance for this. This is much less "valuable piece of fiction with arcs and structure that contributes to the verse as a whole" and much more "a day in the messy life, with bonus henchmen!" It was also intended to be like twenty pages long and ended up as thirty-three, because I have no control over anything. I thought about splitting it in two, but that seemed a bit pointless—I find that I enjoy long one-shots, so I'll just have to hope that y'all are like me in that regard. Go forth and... enjoy?

* * *

 **One  
Occupational Hazards**

A couchbound Joker, while something of a relief for Gotham as a whole, can prove a difficult customer (if not an outright nightmare) for those of us caught more permanently in his orbit.

It was early October, and it started, as so many things do, with the two of us fleeing the scene of a crime. The police hadn't arrived, but Batman certainly had, and though J had been no more forthcoming with the details of his overall plan than usual (which wasn't very), I'd gathered that _this_ time, Batman's attention _wasn't_ the point. The errand had been a supply run of sorts, something to contribute to a plan down the line, and as far as these sorts of things went, we were being fairly quiet, breaking into a medical warehouse downtown, taking what we needed… then, Tall, Dark, and Humorless himself showed up and turned the place into a miniature war zone.

The Joker and I split immediately. It meant cutting loose the second carload of loot and the henchmen currently keeping the Bat busy, but it wasn't a good time to get caught—he had plans in motion, shit going on, and _I_ just wasn't keen on being locked away in the Asylum again.

So we ran, heading to the roof and taking advantage of the tight-knit buildings in that part of town to hop quickly from rooftop to rooftop before finally scaling down a fire escape once we reached the block where the getaway car, manned by Spider, was idling. That was where we ran into trouble, and it was _not_ my fault.

I was in the lead, reached the drop-off of the fire escape, and, prompted by my racing heart and the thrill of a narrow escape, I jumped, turned a pair of quick somersaults in midair, and stuck the landing like a champ, just for the hell of it. The Joker seemed inspired by my example: he didn't bother trying to replicate the flips, because even _he_ had to know it was all too likely that he'd just bust his ass, but when he jumped, he attempted to stick his landing, too.

Key word there being "attempted." He buckled almost immediately, collapsing as his right foot gave out.

Though time was short, I didn't immediately move to help him, perching my hands on my hips and staring at him in disbelief. "Are you _kidding_ me right now?"

"Aughhh," was the only response I got.

"You are _so_ smarter than this. I know you've _got_ to know that the average person's gotta tuck and roll after a drop. You have to have _training_ to just _stick it_ without getting hurt _._ I've got a total of twelve _years_ of training, J—do _you_ have any training?"

He told me to fuck off, and seeing that he was actually having some problems with getting that foot back under him, I abandoned the lecture and went to help him. The fact that he accepted my shoulder to lean on despite the fact that I'd _just_ finished bitching at him was worrisome; the amount of weight he was putting on me was more so. I started to think that we were dealing with more than just a twisted ankle, but it was hardly the time to say so.

We got to the car quickly and without any sign of further trouble. The Joker fell sprawled across the backseat; I wedged myself into the little gully between the front seats and the back and yanked the door shut behind us. "Bat trouble," I told Spider before he could ask. "Get us out of here, please, as quietly as you can."

He obeyed, easing the car from the alley, glancing in the rearview mirror as he went and asking, "What happened to _him_?"

I glanced at the Joker. He glared at me, just _daring_ me to tell Spider the truth. "Nothing serious," I said without breaking eye contact, though I let my eyes crinkle at J to let him know that I, for one, thought it was sort of funny. "Just a little getaway mishap."

Spider nodded, knowing better than to pry, and turned his focus to getting us out safely and without incurring suspicion. I figured it'd be easiest for him to do that if the two clowns in his backseat stayed out of sight, so I stayed put on the floor, and for his part, the Joker didn't seem particularly keen to sit up from where he was lying on his back, knees pulled up so that his long frame could fit on the short bench seat. This put me right next to the injured foot, and I decided I might as well see what we were dealing with.

"Harley," he said warningly, craning his neck to peer at me as soon as my fingers touched his pant leg.

"Ah," I said quickly and stubbornly, cutting him off as I lifted the cuff free from his shoe. "I'm just checking to see how bad it is."

He blew an annoyed gust of air through his lips, but this appeared to be one of the rare battles he just didn't feel like fighting, and after a moment, it became apparent why: he dropped his head back onto the seat and announced, almost wistfully, to the roof of the car, "I tell ya, there are times when I think Batman and me just… aren't _meant to be_. All this bad timing, all theee, uh, _missed connections._ What's a guy gotta do to hang on to a stable relationship in this town, anyway?"

Typically, when he took this line with his rambling ( _oh, Batman and me, soulmates are we,_ yada yada), it annoyed me, but just then, it freed me up to do more or less what I pleased, which at the moment was to inspect the injury. I spent a minute probing the ankle through the sock (more muted today than usual, a purple floral pattern to match his shirt, green vine accents woven through), and then looked up at him with a frown.

"It's already starting to swell," I announced, interrupting the latest rendition of _no, no no, mustn't doubt myself, everyone knows it's destiny._

He seemed a little thrown off. He glanced at me mid-sentence, stopped, propped his arm under his head so he could look at me properly, and said, politely, "Ah. _So?_ "

" _So_ we should get you to see the doctor."

I waited for the realization to kick in, and when it did, I was ready with my arguments. His eyes went wide, just for half a second, then, harshly and emphatically, he declared, "Over _my dead body_."

"Look, it's not exactly like you can go to the hospital—"

"—senile old bat—"

"—might just be a bad sprain but if it's swelling that much already—"

"—paper skin hands creeping all over me, no _thank_ you—"

"—could be a fracture and that'll get worse without treatment—"

"—place always smells like sour cabbage, what _is_ that—"

"Oh, my god, are you twelve? _Are_ you twelve?"

" _We_ have a perfectly good medic at _home_."

It took me a second to process what he was saying, then, in disbelief, I asked, "Are you talking about Harris?" A defensive blink served as confirmation, and I said, "You're kidding. J, when Spider broke his thumb, Harris recommended _amputation_ —and he was _dead serious._ "

"Well, he had some compelling arguments."

I narrowed my eyes at him, because it was getting ridiculous. With the heel of my hand, I tapped the toe of his shoe, making his foot twist and pulling a sharp hiss out of him, as well as instant retaliation—he cuffed me hard on the temple, driving my head into the back of Spider's seat. Spider, wisely, said nothing, and I straightened up, glaring at the Joker just as ferociously as he was glaring at me.

"Look," I said at length, with forced patience, "you're determined not to go, that's fine. Your body, ultimately your call. But if it _is_ a fracture, you're going to end up going anyway to get the bone set, and that'll be _much_ worse. And let me tell you something else, too—unless you take measures to _treat_ the injury, there is _no way_ I'm going to help you with it."

"Is that so," he said, watching me with warningly narrowed eyes, but after seeing him fuck up his landing so badly, I wasn't feeling particularly scared of him at the moment.

"Yeah, that's so," I said flatly. "I'm not interested in enabling you into a complete physical breakdown."

" _Enabling,_ " he mouthed, pulling a disgusted face.

"So you don't want to go to the doctor, fine," I continued stubbornly, "but if you _don't,_ it'll be the boys fetching and carrying for you, _not_ me."

He looked sharply at me. It was a fact known but unspoken—at least in front of most of their number—that the boys (while good at smashing, detonating, battering, beating, or anything else that required a rough touch), were, as a rule, absolutely hopeless when it came to finer points. Trying to get any or all of them to play nursemaid effectively would be like asking Batman to join you in a line dance: it just wasn't going to happen.

At length, he dropped his head with a growl, signifying that he was finished with the argument. I grinned, just as quickly wiped it away, and leaned forward to address Spider. "Take us to Anfisa's, okay?"

"You got it," he said a little wryly.

"Guess now's as good a time as any to get rid of her," the Joker commented loudly.

I ignored him. Though there was always a chance he was serious, I thought it was more likely he was just acting out because he knew I was right. And if he was serious… well, we lost personnel all the time. We'd just find a new medic.

I stretched my arm out on the edge of the seat next to him, pillowed my head on it, and tried to calm my still-racing heart. The adrenaline was still thrumming through my veins from the close call with the Bat, and I wasn't entirely convinced that we were out scot-free. We'd been lucky slipping from his grasp more often than not lately, and I couldn't quite shake the idea that the luck was going to run out.

 _It's all going to be all right,_ I told myself, choosing to believe it, because really, what other choice did I have? _Just breathe._

* * *

After George disappeared (most of the guys believed he'd gotten killed in the shootout with Penguin's men the previous month, and that worked for me), we were in a tight spot vis à vis medical care for a bit. I checked with the guys and found that the most qualified of them was a guy in his twenties called Harris who, it turned out, had taken a first aid class at summer camp when he was a teenager.

Needless to say, he wasn't really cutting it, but he was the best we had. Even so, I wouldn't let him touch me.

So one night, during a standard bit of nonsense, busting up a jewel shop to make some noise and money, I got caught on a piece of jagged glass and tore a good hole in the back of my arm—nothing crazy, but it was bleeding something fierce, and I could tell it was going to need stitches.

"Shit," I said as we bundled into the van and I felt the warm gush of blood rolling down the back of my arm. "Shit fuck."

"Damn, Harl," said Stacks, one of our newer recruits, a brown-bearded white guy of about thirty who had an almost comically loud and husky voice and who I'd never seen not wearing a black beanie. "We gotta get you to Harris."

"Um, _hell_ no," I said as I cracked open the basic little first aid kit we kept in all our cars and yanked out some gauze, bunching it up and jamming it against the gash with a hiss. "I can get an infection just fine on my own."

Stacks made a disapproving noise, but I didn't care. I was too busy trying to figure out how I was going to get patched up without letting Harris get his grubby hands on me. The Joker wasn't with us, which gave me some time—if he'd been there, he'd have flat-out told me that Harris was going to stitch me up and that was that. If I argued, he'd hold me down himself, and I knew him better than to think he'd be gentle about it. That or he'd just leave me to bleed. I didn't feel like gambling.

I was going to have to stitch it up myself, hope that I could sneak past everyone and tend to it quickly. I wasn't looking forward to it—I was fine with needles, I'd stitched up J plenty of times, but something about suturing my own skin gave me the heebie-jeebies.

That was when our driver, a big quiet Russian called Aleksis, spoke up. "You want someone else should stitch you up?"

I glanced at Stacks, then met Aleksis's gaze in the rearview mirror. "You offerin', Slick?" I asked, letting my eyes twinkle a little.

He shook his head. "My babushka—she lives round the corner. Was nurse back in Russia."

My smile vanished immediately at the prospect of a new medic with actual qualifications, and I raised an eyebrow instead. "Good nurse?"

"The best."

"And… how is she going to feel about patching up someone who obviously has reason not to go to the hospital?"

He met my eyes in the rearview mirror. "Why do you think she's no longer in Russia? It's… family business. Well. Except for my brother." I raised an eyebrow, and he said, wryly, "He doesn't like the stereotype."

I laughed aloud, wondering why I'd never really talked to Aleksis, he was _delightful_ —or maybe that was just the blood loss speaking. Reminded of the injury that needed tending, I sat back and nodded. "Okay, fine. Take me to her."

Anfisa ended up being immensely capable. Certainly, her dark little apartment had a faint— _faint!_ —cabbage-y smell, and she was a little odd—of indeterminate age (" _Old,_ " the Joker said definitively, as though it didn't matter beyond that), perpetually nightgowned, and she spoke only Russian (and pretty much spoke constantly, regardless of whether Aleksis—who she called Sasha—was there to translate).

She was also a whiz of a nurse. That first night, she stitched me up so well, I didn't even scar.

Before even seeing how good she was, on the basis of the fact that she sterilized her equipment before touching me (a low bar, I know, but important to me after I'd witnessed Harris use the same needle on _several_ people), I asked Aleksis how she'd feel about going on retainer for a gang of criminals. After a brief conversation with her, he reported that she could use something to keep her hands busy. So she became our medic.

J hated her.

The night of the busted foot, Aleksis wasn't around to translate, and once we'd helped J inside (though in all honestly, it'd felt more like wrestling him—just because he'd basically yielded didn't mean he intended to make things easy for us), I indicated the problem foot.

She replied in her own language and got to work. The Joker eyed her with open malevolence as she reached for his ankle. "I'm gonna kick you right in your dried-apple ol' face," he announced to her.

"You _better_ not!" I exclaimed, slightly alarmed, as Spider—presumably glad to have an excuse to duck away—answered his ringing cell phone.

The Joker, rudely, pointed at Anfisa, who was addressing him in response, and though none of the three of us spoke Russian, her tone of cronish disapproval was universal. "She's _cussing_ at me, Harley."

"You do _not_ speak Russian."

"Oh, how would _you_ know," he muttered crabbily, slouching deep in his chair, but it seemed to deflate him a little (and I'm sure the long night on the tail end of seventy-two hours straight spent awake didn't help).

Reassured that he was not going to kick an old lady in the face, at least not right away, I tuned into Spider's conversation right as he said, "Arrested? How many?"

"And who?" I added, pitching my voice to get his attention, and he repeated my question into the phone.

The Joker, thinking he was in the clear because my attention was turned elsewhere, muttered to Anfisa, "Your days are _number-ed._ "

I whirled, jabbing a finger threateningly at him. " _Hey._ "

"What?" he snarled back.

Spider took the phone's speaker away from his mouth and said to me, "Seven of the guys. Doherty, Mex, Ace—"

" _Ace?_ " I repeated, and cackled.

"I'm glad you think it's funny that my help is getting arrested," the Joker groused behind me.

I resisted the urge to accuse him of being grumpy because of his injury and instead just said, "He's had it coming a long time, we all know it."

Anfisa rose abruptly and said something in Russian. The Joker cocked his head and licked his lips, looking up at her with bright-eyed attention, exaggerated enough that no one could miss that he was faking it. I shot him a split-second glance of disapproval that he didn't see (wouldn't have mattered if he had), then said to her, "What's that?"

She paused, looked around, then grabbed a pencil from a cup on the end table and snapped it in half in one quick motion. She looked at me to make sure I was paying attention, then pointed at the Joker's ankle and wagged her finger. _No._

"See?" the Joker said immediately. "Not broken."

I allowed myself a sigh of relief, then steeled up again. "But sprained?" I asked, placing my closed fists together and twisting them in opposite directions.

Anfisa nodded, and mumbled as she moved into the kitchen. She was back in a flash, and sank into a spare chair, then lifted her leg up high.

" _Ugh_ ," said the Joker, theatrically looking away, but I watched as she pressed a clattering handful of ice to her ankle.

"Ice and elevation. Got it," I said brightly.

"Ice and elevation," mocked the Joker. "Couldn't have come up with _that_ on our own."

"Well," I said with exaggerated patience as I stepped towards Anfisa, pulling out a wad of bills and counting a few off for her, "if _I'd_ recommended it, would you have listened?"

" _Harley,_ " he replied, matching my tone exactly, "you really think I'm gonna listen to _her_ instead?" I shot him a look, half-disapproving and half affectionate, over my shoulder, so of course he added, "Then _again,_ she at least _possibly_ has some kind of medical degree."

"I'm not going to respond to that _,_ " I fired back as Anfisa patted my shoulder with transparent sympathy. By that point, it would have been obvious to the deaf and the blind that I was in for a rough time.

* * *

It took a while for me to start reaping the consequences of the devil's bargain I'd made.

After we got back to the hideout, the Joker allowed me to help him to the room we sometimes shared, though I suspected it was only so he could hit me a few times with his impossibly sharp elbows on the way (he was catlike in that regard, tolerating contact just so he could have access to vulnerable spots).

(He would also murder me slowly and painfully if he knew there was any part of me making comparisons between him and a housecat, but what with his generally erratic and violent nature, said comparisons drew themselves.)

He shook me off and maneuvered his way to the bed, and he must have really been tired, because he lowered himself down, turned on his side with his back to me, and immediately fell asleep.

 _Well. That's unexpected,_ I thought, frowning at the knotted back of his head. Usually, injured Joker was even more contrary than healthy Joker, more determined to drive himself into exhaustion, whether because it gave him a masochistic thrill or because he delighted in driving me crazy. Yielding so easily to the rest he clearly needed was unlike him. I hoped it didn't signify something worse than just the sprained ankle.

I put those thoughts out of my head—the Joker, in his more indulgent moods, teased me often about making up for the fact that _he_ never worried by worrying enough for the _both_ of us, and while sometimes my overthinking saved us from some unforeseen consequences, I couldn't see any potential benefits for it in this case.

I didn't stick around—he needed sleep, and even when I was being quiet, my conscious presence had a way of rousing him. I took off, leaving him alone to rest.

We were currently staying at the bottom floor of a condemned housing project in the Narrows. After the easy matter of clearing out some squatters who'd been making their home, we'd set up shop just over a week ago. I always preferred the places that were originally designed as residences to the warehouses and old shops we sometimes found ourselves in—they were by nature much homier. We mostly occupied the block of apartments furthest from the street, and the boys had taken to renovating, i.e. taking sledgehammers to mold-infested walls to "open up the space." I suspected that it had more to do with feeding their insatiable lust for destruction, but fewer walls made it easier to keep an eye on them, and as long as they left places for people (read: me) to hole up and sleep in peace, I wasn't going to complain.

I passed through the huge recreational space that we had as a result of the boys' endeavors, towards the foremost kitchen. We had several kitchens as a consequence of the location, but this was the one I'd bleached the shit out of and told everyone to use—there were two guys in there now, and I leaned a hip against the door frame and crossed my arms, raising an eyebrow at the sight.

The more obvious figure was Ty, a lanky black guy a few years younger than I was, impossibly loud, impossibly tall, with a flat, deadpan sense of humor I found infectious and a permanent crafty glow in his eyes. He was a troublemaker, constantly instigating fights with the other guys (he thought it was especially funny to prod at the ones who took themselves too seriously), and I tried to keep a close eye on him, because I knew _he_ knew he was one of my favorites, and he had a history of using that to his advantage.

Currently, he was standing on the countertop, head ducked to avoid hitting the ceiling, rifling through one of the buckling top cabinets, and as I arrived in the doorway, he was belting out, "Man, I don't give a _fuck_ about the Geneva Convention."

He was talking, presumably, to the room's other occupant, Deni, who was short and stocky, light-skinned and dark-haired, around my age, more clean-cut than a lot of our guys, and a lot less talkative. I tended to keep an eye on Deni, too, though for less personal reasons—years ago, he had been one of the Chechen's guys who'd been press-ganged into our operation when the Joker killed his boss (I'd told the Joker that, historically speaking, this was not really an effective way to recruit; he'd talked circles around me in response but the gist was that he disagreed). I felt a little guilty about it, since technically he'd been with our operation longer than I had, but he'd been serving a stint in prison when I first joined up and got out while I was imprisoned in Arkham, so we didn't know each other well, and his taciturn personality meant that nothing had changed in that respect.

I felt a little bad about my suspicion that he was just waiting around to betray us, given how long he'd been around, but I'd been backstabbed one too many times of late, Deni presumably had motive to hurt us, and I didn't love the idea of letting my guard down just so it could happen again. Dish best served cold and all that.

Though Ty was turned half away from the door, my arrival put me in Deni's eye line—he was standing in the middle of the kitchen, arms crossed, watching Ty do whatever he was doing, and when he spotted me he cleared his throat, loudly (at least as far as Deni was concerned).

Ty immediately looked over his shoulder, quickly and guiltily enough that I knew he was up to something—as if the fact that he'd felt the need to haul his entire 6'4, 150-pound frame all the way up on the counter wasn't suspicious enough. I narrowed my eyes at him and said, "Hi, Ty."

"Uh. Hi, Harley."

"Whatchya lookin' for?"

He shot me a hunted look. "Um… cereal?"

I raised an eyebrow, glanced at Deni, whose poker face told me nothing, then passed through the kitchen to the row of counters opposite Ty, opened one at eye level, and pulled out a box of chocolate cereal.

"Aw, man, that's that store brand shit," Ty objected vehemently.

Deni coughed, a pointed noise which I interpreted to mean _it doesn't matter and you're overplaying your hand._ Ty took the hint and dropped from the counter, and, sensing that I'd find out less if I asked what they were up to outright than if I just let them stew a bit, I didn't say anything, just held out the box.

Ty snatched the box from my hand, barked "Thanks!", and practically bolted from the kitchen, followed instantly by a silent Deni. I frowned at the suddenly empty space, then hopped up onto the counter where Ty had been and checked the cabinets he'd been going through. All I got for my trouble was the sight of an impressively huge cockroach, lying dead on its back—the cabinets were otherwise empty.

I put the weird encounter on my mental backburner. Subtlety wasn't our guys' strong suit; if this was something that could cause a problem, it'd pop back up—it didn't seem prudent to start worrying till then.

Aside from the cereal I'd just handed over to Ty, we had practically no food, and I made a mental note to send someone out to buy a shitload of groceries later and made do with two little bags of mini pretzels still within their expiration date.

Given that it was 4 AM by then, I _should_ have gone to bed after taking the edge off my appetite, barred myself in one of the intact bedrooms I'd marked as mine and passed out in a nest of sleeping bags, but I was wired after the events of the night, and instead found myself out in the rec space with a group of the guys. They were playing some old split-screen death match video game that prompted a lot of cursing and threats, and I stationed myself on an ottoman in view of the screen and practiced picking various handcuff locks behind my back with a paper clip.

(I preferred to practice picking cuffs when the Joker was out, asleep, or otherwise occupied. First time, I'd entrusted him with the key, and when I'd grown tired of the fruitless endeavor, I'd asked him to let me go. He'd refused. I should have seen it coming, but no amount of begging, yelling, pleading, or threatening would make him budge, and when I'd finally by some fluke of luck managed to spring the lock after an hour and gone to find him, pissed off and looking for blood, his only reply was "Well, you _learned,_ didn't you?" After that, I kept a key in my back pocket, within easy reach, but given that the Joker was not averse to picking me up and searching my pockets for that key while I was half-incapacitated, I only really felt comfortable honing those skills when I was pretty sure he wouldn't suddenly come along and ramp my practice up to expert mode.)

After I grew bored of that, the guys had finished their game and switched to the TV. There was some grumbling about the remote control being missing, then some arguing over who would get up and change the channel, which died down into reverent near-silence when they realized Lady Snowblood was playing. I'd never seen it, and ended up on the couch wedged between Spider and Stacks, eyes wide and mouth slightly open as I took in all the gore. TV blood was always better than the real thing.

The natural result of all this was that when the Joker finally roused himself around 10 AM, I'd been up for almost 24 hours, and I was just starting to feel drowsy and contemplate taking a quick nap when his familiar gravelly shout ripped through the hideout: "HAR- _LEY_!"

"I think the boss wants you, Harl," said Stacks helpfully.

I leveled a shriveling look at him ("What'd I do?" he asked Spider over my head), hauled myself off the couch, and hiked across the house to answer the call.

The Joker, as was his preference, had holed up in the furthest room from the general living area. I paused outside of the door for a moment, flashing suddenly to the other times the Joker had played the invalid—the time he'd been deathly ill the winter before, then the horrible night the previous month when he'd come home with a hole in his shoulder, leaking blood like he didn't need it. My heart skipped a beat at the thought, and I closed my eyes, pressing my forehead against the door for a moment, trying to quell the sudden surge of anxiety.

"HAR- _LEY_!"

He was starting to sound impatient. I opened my eyes and rallied myself. This time, I wasn't putting myself in his crosshairs by forcing him to stay put, and this time, it was just a minor injury, a sprained ankle, not a life-threatening gunshot wound. _It'll be all right,_ I told myself, took a deep breath, and went into the room.

The Joker was maneuvering himself to the edge of the bed, and glanced up briefly at the creak of the door. " _You_ look like you just got hit by a train," he commented offhand, lowering his bare feet carefully to the floor.

I scowled reflexively. _Not nice._ "Yeah? Well, _you_ look—" He peered suddenly up at me, eyes bright and curious, and I thought better of finishing that thought, because at best he'd hold it over my head and make me feel guilty for saying something mean about him (even in jest) indefinitely. "—like one million dollars," I sighed in defeat, and he snorted contemptuously (though I'd be hard-pressed to say whether the sentiment was directed towards my perceived lack of spine or my assessment of his looks) but moved along to his reason for calling me:

"Get me a crutch," he said impatiently.

I raised an eyebrow in disbelief. _He just got a good six hours of sleep while I've been up all night, and_ _ **he's**_ _the one who gets to be short? I am not playing that game._ "How 'bout I get you an ice pack instead?" I asked, eyeing his foot carefully. He still had his suit pants on, and they effectively hid my view of his ankle—I was weighing the idea of going over and stooping to check his ankle up close against the (generous) possibility of getting kicked in the face while I was down there, when he sighed loudly, drawing my attention back to his face. _Ah, shit,_ I thought, reading the familiar frown creases in the paint; _he's getting pissed._

"I didn't _ask_ for an ice pack," he said in that tone of exaggerated patience I _really_ hated. "I asked for a _crutch._ "

 _Technically , you didn't_ _ **ask**_ _for anything,_ I thought, but after nearly a year of living with him, I knew better than to say it out loud. Instead, gently, I said, "It'll heal faster if you stay off it and ice it down."

He sat perfectly still for a moment, hands braced on his knees, head tilted as he studied me. For a moment, he did nothing but suck quietly at the inside of a scar, then said, "Do you re _mem_ ber what happened the last time you tried to keep me off my feet when I had work to do?"

I felt the panic crawling up again and tried to shove it out of the way before I spoke, to keep it out of my voice. "This isn't that."

He screwed up his face and said with false regret, "It's kinda starting to _look_ like that."

"I—"

My voice failed me. It wasn't even in the same _realm_ as his forced imprisonment at my hand all those months ago, and I knew it, but I couldn't make myself say so. All I could think at that moment was that if I pushed too hard, nagged too much, then he'd send me right back to Arkham. So I swallowed my arguments and looked down at my feet until he spoke again.

"Come _here,_ " he said quietly.

Obediently, I walked over to stand in front of him. He exhaled through his nose, then reached up with both hands, closing his fingers around my wrists and swiping his thumbs idly down across my palms. "Harley," he said absently, then tipped his head back and looked me in the eye. "Ah… pumpkin. You know better than this. The work… doesn't… _stop._ So, uh, get me a crutch before I gouge your goddamn _eyes_ out."

A soft, stuttering exhale escaped my lungs as if squeezed out, and for some reason, I couldn't draw a breath to replace it. The Joker narrowed his eyes a little bit, smiling there if not through the mouth, and then, still looking me right in the eye, he lifted one of my hands, the left, drawing it up until his lips made contact, gently, with the smooth spot of skin between my thumb and forefinger. He lingered over it for a minute, gaze unwavering, then lifted his head and said, " _Please_."

It took me a moment to move, mostly because I wasn't sure my knees would hold me right away. The mix of fear and attraction was potent, made me feel temporarily boneless, and as I looked him in those black-rimmed eyes, I thought, _damn, but I love you._

He dropped my hands abruptly and swatted me twice on the butt, breaking the spell. "C'mon, Harley," he barked, making me start. "You're burning _dayl_ ight."

I snapped out of it and managed to give him a little sarcastic smile. "Aye, aye," I said, lifting two fingers in the most half-assed salute ever made, and then left the room to attempt to find him a damn crutch.

Easier said than done.

"What do you _mean,_ we don't have a crutch?" I demanded a few minutes later. "We're like the most accident-prone operation on the planet, guys bust their legs every two seconds, and we don't have a _single crutch_?"

Harris, the stand-in medic for injuries that didn't warrant Anfisa's attention, barely looked up from his hand of cards. "I don't know what you want me to say, Harley. We're badly equipped on the best of days, and we move around a lot. Plenty of shit gets left behind. If we ever had one, we sure as hell don't now."

"What about a cane? Anything like that?"

Harris pulls a card from his hand, plays it upright on the table. "Nope."

"You are the world's _worst_ medic," I told him furiously, hands perched on my hips. "We were _just_ at a hospital warehouse."

"Oh, excuse me for not being psychic! What, I'm supposed to keep us stocked up for every possible injury?"

" _Yes,_ " I said emphatically. "Why do you think we let you sit out the firefights? You're supposed to be thinking ahead, getting ready for inevitable injuries—it's your _job_ to be prepared to take care of everyone!"

"C'mon, what do you want me to do?" he drawled, slouching in his chair.

" _What you agreed to do,_ " I snapped, flattening my palm against the cards he held and pushing them down to the tabletop. "Otherwise, you can head out there with the _brave_ guys and face fire like _they_ do every day."

Harris glared at me, I glared back, and it might have come to blows if Deni hadn't cleared his throat from across the room.

I turned to look at him, and silently, he held up a hockey stick.

"What the—" I started.

"It's better than nothing, huh?" he asked, lifting an eyebrow and gesturing with the stick.

I frowned. "Where did you even find that?"

He shrugged, suddenly abashed. "Some of us like to play in the street. Y'know, sometimes."

I stared for a minute before letting my face relax a bit, shooting him a wry smile. " _Thank_ you," I said emphatically, glancing sideways at Harris, who muttered something inaudible and picked up his cards again. "He's going to give me shit for it, but until we can actually get something legitimate, it'll do." He nodded and handed over the stick—it was almost as tall as I was, which meant it would fit comfortably under J's shoulder. "Thanks," I said, shot one more glare in Harris's direction, and headed back to the Joker.

He wasn't impressed.

Miraculously, he was actually still sitting on the bed, waiting for me to return rather than trying to get around on his busted foot, and when I arrived in the doorway, he looked pointedly at the stick and said, "What're you… gonna _hit_ me with that?"

I flashed him a wicked smile, then crossed into the room and stretched the stick out towards him. "Your crutch."

He glanced at the stick, then at me, then back to the stick again. He didn't say _are you serious;_ didn't need to—I raised my eyebrows emphatically and said, "I _told_ you Harris is a fuckup. There's not a proper crutch in the place; this'll have to do for now."

He rolled his eyes, a split second expression of exasperation, then snatched the stick from me and rose, standing on his good foot and wedging the makeshift crutch into his armpit. He shot me a poisonous smile and with false cheer, asked, "Would you look at that? Fits like a glove."

I held up my hands, a placating gesture. "It's just temporary, okay? I can run out right now and get you a real one."

"No," he said shortly, hobbling across the room towards the bathroom. "I want you _here._ " Before I could reply, he shut the bathroom door behind him.

 _Great._ I sighed, worried my bottom lip for a second, then moved over to sit down on the edge of the bed—

—only to jump right back up and reach beneath the covers to retrieve the hard object I'd sat on, a little handgun. "Oh, for fuck's—" I muttered, inspecting it. I checked the magazine, which was full, and on a hunch, I ejected a live round from the chamber. "Safety off, fully loaded, he is going to roll over and shoot himself in the head someday," I muttered, placing the magazine and gun on the little wooden crate that served as a nightstand.

The shower started running, and I rolled my eyes. _Hell of a time to get gussied up,_ I thought, but I smothered that tiny voice in my head fretting that he would lose his footing in the shower and bust his head open on the faucet— _yeah, right, he'll stay upright out of sheer pride_ —and glanced over at his desk.

Crutches and food and clothing and guns might be left behind as we moved from hideout to hideout, furniture and beds and the layout always varied widely, but there was one fixed point in all of our safe houses: the Joker's desk. It was never the same one—moving furniture was too unwieldy; it made no sense to get fixated on any of it—but he always had one, his center of operations, stuffed full with notes, papers, electronics, makeup, and weapons. Back when I first took up with him, I was afraid to even touch it, but over time, working as his right hand, I'd grown familiar with it by necessity.

I moseyed over to the desk and searched through it, avoiding the bottom drawer, which I knew was stuffed with canisters of his experimental laughing gas—all different levels of unstable. Instead, I looked around through the top, searching through the papers there till I found a torn piece with a name and number on it. I found a pen, scratched a copy of the information on the inside of my wrist, then put the paper back and closed the drawer, just the way I found it.

I looked longingly at the bed, but the sleepless night was making my eyelids heavy and I knew if I lay down, then I'd fall asleep instantly, so I opted instead to sit in the hard, uncomfortable desk chair, waiting the Joker out. The shower turned off after a bit, I heard him moving around for a few moments, then the door snapped open.

No steam billowed out with him—I couldn't help but shake my head; he knew full well that six hours of sleep after seventy-two awake wasn't sufficient but he was being stubborn, taking a cold shower to really wake him up. His paint was fresh, he was rubbing at the back of his damp head with a towel, and he'd put on pants, but hadn't bothered with the rest.

My eyes lingered on him appreciatively. He'd never been the type to _ripple_ , looked nothing like what I imagined Batman looked like beneath that armor, but a hectic, mobile life combined with the fact that he simply never ate as much as I thought he should rendered him cut in a wiry, stringy way. His shoulders always looked broader when they weren't covered up, tapering down to a narrow waist with abdominal muscles just visible if he tensed, and my eyes caught on his jutting hipbones, the path of dark hair trailing down from his navel.

I swallowed past the sudden dryness in my throat.

Though nothing could convince me he didn't preen at least a little bit when I looked at him like I'd like to devour him, he never let me ogle for long. He tossed the towel aside, took up his makeshift crutch, and came over, reaching me in just a few jerky strides. "Up," he said impatiently, gripping the back of the chair and shaking it hard to dislodge me even as I moved to obey. " _My_ seat."

I sighed drolly and strode over to the bed, dropping down onto the edge, but no sooner had I taken a seat than he barked, "Coffee," not even looking at me as he leveraged himself down into the vacated desk chair.

I paused. Although I knew it was useless, I couldn't help but say, softly, "You know, more sleep would help you heal—"

" _Harley,_ " he said in a tone that brooked no argument, head already bent over whatever project he'd decided to focus on.

"Right," I muttered, getting up. If this day was going to be as difficult as I imagined, I could actually use some coffee as well, so I didn't fight anymore, just slipped out of the room to get a pot brewing.

Aside from Harris's group playing cards, the hideout was fairly quiet, with henchmen sleeping in side rooms or off visiting girlfriends or boyfriends or getting into trouble, whatever they did when they weren't at headquarters and weren't needed. Ty and Stacks, then, huddled away in a corner, stuck out like a sore thumb to me—doubly so because they were _whispering,_ something I hadn't thought either of them capable of before that day. On a whim, I looked beyond them, and sure enough, I spotted Deni skulking around the corner behind them, disappearing from view a second later.

I made a detour, and noted the way Ty's eyes lit on me with something like alarm over Stacks' shoulder, the way they clammed up immediately at my arrival—much like he and Deni had when I'd walked in on them in the kitchen earlier. I gave them a bright smile, looked from one guilty face to the other, and asked, "What's up?"

"Nothin," said Stacks at the same time Ty answered, "Chillin'."

"Uh-huh," I said, maintaining the smile but narrowing my eyes. "Shouldn't you guys be getting some sleep? You were up all night with the rest of us, weren't you?"

"Yeah," said Stacks in his usual loud tones. "I was just saying, I'm beat."

"Uh, me too," said Ty. "Night, Harley." Then, unceremoniously, the two practically bolted.

I watched them vanish into the front of the building, eyebrow raised suspiciously, then shook my head. "It is _not_ the time," I muttered to myself, and went on into the kitchen.

I ran through theories as I stood at the counter, waiting for the coffee to brew. _Some sort of coup?_ Though the Joker was widely considered to be too terrifying to betray, the guys we hired weren't known for being big thinkers, and the Edward Nigma fiasco of the previous month might have made them bold. Still… although the association with Deni was worrisome, _Ty? Stacks?_ I couldn't see either of them turning on us—especially since at the moment, there was no other big operation to turn _to_ except the crippled, infighting-riddled Italian mob.

I couldn't see them plotting to just pick up and leave, either. Among Gotham's underworld, there was a certain amount of prestige that came with working for the Joker, and I knew the two of them enjoyed it. I couldn't see them just… going straight, out of the blue.

Maybe it was drugs—I didn't ban the use of them in general, just in the hideout, but from the reaction I got you'd think I ordered all the guys to adopt a straight-edge lifestyle, no exceptions. Or maybe they were running some private deal of their own and trying to keep it quiet—smart, given that one could never predict when the Joker would shrug off freelance work or when he'd take it as infringing on his territory, but if that was it, I wish they'd just tell _me_ so I could quit worrying about them.

The coffee machine finished brewing and beeped, drawing my attention back to it. I tried to shake off my suspicions and focus instead on pouring coffee for me and the Joker, but the worry hovered in the back of my mind, sticking with me as I returned to his bedroom-office.

I'll admit to glancing over his shoulder as I set his mug on the desk, curious as always about what he was working on, but as usual, the exact purpose of the blueprints and train schedules and defaced newspaper articles eluded me. I gave up, returned to the bed with my own cup of coffee, and as I drew my legs up beneath me I said, "The henchmen are getting kind of squirrely. I think we should have a chokey put into the hideout so we'll have somewhere to put them until they cool down."

I hadn't really been expecting a response, talking mostly for my own amusement, but he turned his head slightly, not-quite looking at me over his shoulder, and said, "Ah. … _chokey?_ "

"Yeah," I said, "you know, from _Matilda?_ " I got nothing but more silence and stillness, which I interpreted as a demand for clarification. "Right," I muttered, "of course you don't know _Matilda,_ you're a STEM guy if I ever met one—the chokey was like… a torture closet the principal of the school had, really small, studded with glass and nails so you couldn't move or sit down when she put you in it without getting gouged. She'd stick kids who were misbehaving in there and leave 'em."

"Sounds like an innovator," he commented idly, and I snorted in agreement, reaching for my coffee.

The next couple of hours passed peacefully, or close to it, anyway. The Joker stayed at his desk, working, and I sat cross-legged on the bed behind him, sipping coffee and reading magazines and trying to stay awake. The Joker was being temperate for the time being, but even before going to see Anfisa, we'd made an agreement, mostly-unspoken, that if he stayed off the bad leg and let it heal, then I would be his hands and feet while he needed me to. I had little doubt that if I took a much-needed nap, then he'd read it as a violation of my side of the agreement and would be running around exacerbating his injury in no time. I wasn't about to let that happen, so I drank entirely too much coffee and stayed attentive.

It went all right, to begin with. The Joker, ever industrious, had a million things he wanted done, so it seemed like every time I was about to nod off, he'd bark an order—go send x group of henchmen for recon here, more coffee, go wake what's-his-face and ask him if he did that thing, _food now,_ hike down to the basement and see if that big Russian guy had set up the lights like he was supposed to, _do-you-see-that-big-black-shadow-on-the-wall-or-is-it-only-me-no-just-kidding,_ etc., rinse, repeat.

I followed through, increasingly zombie-like, until well into the afternoon. I may have actually slipped into some kind of micro-sleep, because suddenly I was aware that something had called my attention, but couldn't quite recall what that _something_ was.

The Joker had laced his hands together behind his back, behind his chair, and was stretching his shoulders with a groan. His joints cracked and popped, then he relaxed, swiveled to look at me, then said accusingly, " _This_ isn't working."

I was still in zombie mode, and the statement made no sense to me. Rubbing the heel of my hand into one dry eye, I asked, " _What_ isn't working?"

He rolled the tip of his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip in lieu of answering, and then reached out for the hockey stick and was on his feet and halfway out of the room before I even processed what was happening.

"Whoa," I said, faintly alarmed, launching myself off the bed. "Hey, J—what's up?"

He ignored me, of course, and I rolled my eyes, following him out into the big rec space. It was late afternoon by then, and the henchmen had begun to stir. They were playing poker, trying to scrape some food together, watching TV, and generally going about their everyday business, and I watched them tense up at the Joker's presence, all pretending that it didn't frighten them, all sneaking furtive glances at him out of the corners of their eyes, trying to keep track of him, to get a bead on his mood and what his presence meant. He had a habit of keeping to himself when we were at headquarters, rarely interacting with the men unless it had to do with work, so they knew the sight of his face meant they needed to pay close attention. Just not _too_ close. No good painting a target on one's back.

That day, he was a man on a mission, and stumped directly over to the little den the boys had shaped around the TV, the ripped and tattered curbside couches and armchairs a direct contrast to the gleaming big-screen plasma that had fallen off the back of a truck somewhere. He paused, cast a quick, baleful eye over the guys huddled round—all of whom had tensed up wisely at his approach—and said, impatiently, "Gimme the remote."

There were a few anxiously-exchanged glances, then Harris spoke up. "It's missing, boss."

The look of disappointed disgust he shot them was so withering I was surprised any of the guys had eyebrows by the time he glanced back at the TV. He didn't bother ordering them to look for it (selective blindness took on a whole new dimension when it came to our boys) and just turned back to the screen. After a second of staring at what was playing—it looked like _Fargo_ to me, Steve Buscemi in a turtleneck and at his most off-putting—he lifted his crutch and stabbed at the television.

Ostensibly, he was trying to change the channel, but his aim was off, and he hit the screen, then again, and again. I knew him, I knew his aim would never be that bad if he really cared, I knew it would be actively easier to move close to the TV and change the channel manually, and so I guessed he was just doing it to get a rise out of the henchmen, if not to punish them for misplacing the remote to begin with, and I waited in silence to see who'd snap first.

To no one's surprise, it was Harris. His feet came off of the cinderblock he was using as an ottoman, he sat up straight, and loudly, he said, "Whoa, whoa—what the hell you doing?!"

The Joker didn't even spare him a glance. "Turning on the news," he muttered under his breath as the butt of the stick actually landed successfully on the button and the channel changed—to a Britney Spears music video. He swore and stabbed at the TV again, hitting the screen and leaving a couple of bursts of light where the stick struck.

Harris bounded to his feet. "You're busting the pixels!" he exclaimed, voice shrill with alarm. It was true—the TV already had a couple of tiny permanently blue spots where it had been hit with airsoft bullets during a tournament arranged by Ty and Stacks the previous week (I was of the opinion that they got shot at _enough_ with _real bullets,_ but that was our boys for you—thrillseekers, all of them), and now there was a splotch of more of them where the Joker had just struck the screen.

The Joker stopped abruptly and gave him a _look_ , the kind of look that always warned me to cut and run _immediately_ on the off-chance that the head start would keep him from catching up to me in just a few long-legged strides. Harris, as a henchman, didn't really have the luxury of running—the Joker wouldn't think twice about spraying a handful of bullets into his back, whereas with me I think half the joy was the chase—but he clearly recognized that he'd misstepped and went about trying to fix it.

"I'm just sayin', boss—why don't you have a seat here and let me change the channel _for_ you? Be easier that way."

The Joker's shoulders tensed, his chest puffed out, and I slapped a hand over my mouth to smother a giggle before it could form. I'd seen that body language before in henchmen, Harris among them, when they were on the verge of a physical fight: arms bowed up, jaw jutting, their last-ditch effort to ruffle up their feathers and intimidate the other guy into backing off. The imitation wasn't good news for Harris—the Joker got a lot more openly mocking right before he was about to dole out some pain, I'd found—but it _was_ extremely funny.

"What're you saying, huh?" he asked, his tone faintly pugnacious. "You think I can't work a TV myself? You think I need your _help_?"

Harris, realizing that he was in trouble, sank down onto the couch cushions, dropping his voice to a mutter. "No, boss."

The Joker cupped his hand around his ear. "What's that?"

" _No_ , _boss_ ," Harris repeated, louder. "Just offering."

The Joker slowly lowered the hockey stick, setting the base delicately on the ground, his eyes fixed on Harris the whole time. He tilted his head, looking too perfectly ingenuous to be believed, and I could practically see the gears turning in his head as he ran through potential reactions, method after morbid method of making Harris an _example_ as punishment for the presumed offense.

Then, his expression shuttered. His eyes rolled from one end of the room to the other as he took stock of the group, the crowd of henchmen hanging breathless off his movements, waiting to see what was going to happen, and he sucked his teeth: a sign of boredom and contempt, normally a _bad_ sign for anyone around, but in this case, the boredom appeared to be directed towards the entire little encounter with Harris. Without another look at our supposed medic, he fitted his crutch beneath his arm and loped moodily out of the room.

I lingered for a bit, drifting close to tense the cluster of guys around the TV and shooting them a glare. " _Where_ is the remote?"

"Nobody knows," whined Rod, another kid a few years younger than I was, potentially too soft for this job. "Ace had it last."

I closed my eyes and muttered "Fuckin' Ace" under my breath, because of _course_ he'd be the key to this little mystery, and then, stretching out my index finger, I swept it across the little group pointedly. " _Find. It."_

"Harley, we already _tried_ —" began Harris, but I'd had enough, and wheeled around to follow the Joker back to the bedroom to see what he was up to now. He might be _acting_ bored, but it wasn't like him to just drop a promising and entertaining altercation, especially when he was starting to get a touch of cabin fever and could use the diversion. He had something else cooking, I was fairly sure of it.

A suspicion that was confirmed as soon as I stepped into the room. Somewhat to my surprise, he was back on the bed, sitting upright with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out, absently spinning the cylinder of the revolver he held in his hand. When I appeared, he looked sideways at me, snapped the cylinder closed, flipped the revolver so he was holding it by the barrel, handle pointed towards me, and he ordered, "Shoot Harris."

My eyes went wide at that one even as I reached out to take the gun. "Seriously? You're letting _me_ do that?"

"My generosity knows _no_ bounds," he claimed, pulling back and lacing his hands lazily behind his head, shooting me a self-satisfied grin. I narrowed my eyes at him, sparing a quick glance downward as I checked the cylinder to make sure the gun was actually loaded and he wasn't stirring up shit (it was, but he possibly still was, as well). He looked tired, which was par for the course, but the fact that he was also off his feet was telling—I figured he just didn't want to hobble back and forth again to dole out justice. I didn't blame him. The first day after a sprain was rough; in the past, I'd shed tears if I'd put too much weight on a sprained ankle too soon.

"Any preference as to _where_?" I asked, starting to feel the electric excitement warming my chest. _I've got permission to shoot Harris!_ I'd been wanting to do it since the aforementioned incident with the unclean needle.

The Joker inhaled deep and long through his nose, drumming his fingertips on his leg, and then, as he exhaled, said, "Surprise me." I winked at him and turned away, only to turn right back impatiently as he ordered, "Harley, wait." He rolled his eyes up into the left corner of their sockets, ostensibly in deep thought, though I suspected he was just enjoying making me wait, then he said, "Hit him in the _foot._ "

"You got it," I said, then bolted before he could call me back again. He cackled distantly behind me.

I stalked out into the common area again, veins abuzz, looking for my target. He'd settled back down in front of the TV, making no effort to locate the remote, which made my resolve even stronger. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a few guys getting quickly to their feet as I stalked past, recognizing danger when they saw it, but Harris's back was to me, so he was shit out of luck.

I put the gun behind my back as I rounded the couch. Rod must have seen the look in my eye, because he slipped away from the couch immediately, but Harris had a long and proud history of being a dumbass, and he just smirked at me, believing himself out of danger now that the boss was out of sight. "What," he asked, "come to nag a little more?"

Some well-meaning soul behind me who could actually see the gun hissed "Harris, _shut up_."

Presumably because the word of warning came from someone he actually cared to listen to, Harris started to catch on to the fact that something was up. The smirk started to fade, slowly, and he said, "What's up?"

I frowned. Most of our guys were sprawlers, feet on the ground, knees splayed wide, but Harris, already compact, was apparently the type to sit with his feet folded under him. That was a problem. "Where are your feet?" I asked irritably.

"What are you hiding behind your back?" he demanded.

"Stand up," I ordered.

If anything, he shrank down further into the couch, some little rodent instinct telling him that moving would be the worst thing he could possibly do. I rolled my eyes, letting out a huff of impatience, then said, "Fine" and brought the gun up, trailing it on him.

"Jesus!" he yelped, bolting upright as that instinct abandoned him and climbing backwards over the back of the couch with a frankly impressive amount of grace, given the fact that he didn't take his eyes off the gun the whole time. He stopped once he'd put the couch between us and held out his hands, transformed into a supplicant by the sight of the deadly weapon. _Too late._

"L-listen, Harley," he said, stealing furtive, half-second glances at the other guys, looking for help. I checked out of the corners of my eyes to see if there was anything I needed to worry about, but, wisely, most of the henchmen had disappeared from the room—experience told them that if bullets were about to fly, it would be wisest to put some distance between themselves and the guns, whether they were the intended target or not. The ones who hadn't fled were staying put, unwilling to stick their necks out for someone who wasn't all that popular to begin with.

I cut him off. "Harris, come around the couch."

"What are you, crazy? No!"

"I'm not gonna hurt you bad," I said, exasperated.

"Oh, well in that case—" he began sarcastically.

"If I was going to kill you, I'd shoot right now; your whole trunk is in my sights," I pointed out, training the gun on his heart to prove my point. He responded by dropping out of sight. "Fuck," I mouthed, and leaped over the couch in pursuit.

Fortunately, he was trying to crawl away, so when I landed on the other side, I had a clear view of his feet. I steadied myself, took aim, said, "I'll try not to shoot you in the ass," and fired.

Unfortunately, at the sound of my voice, he tried to jump upright to make a run for it, and my shot went wide. " _Shit_ ," we said at the same time, though Harris's was decidedly more of a yelp.

"Harris," I snapped, "stop _right_ now or I _will_ shoot you in the ass." I fired another shot in warning, and he yelped again, ducking instinctively. By the time he straightened up, the reality of his situation seemed to have set in—he was far from any exit, and no one was coming to help. Shaking, he put his hands up and slowly turned.

"Harley, come on," he pleaded. "Take it easy. I didn't—I didn't mean anything by—"

"Don't be a big baby," I chastised him. "Take your punishment like a man." Before he could answer, to try to make any further effort to defend himself, I fired.

A little blood spray erupted from the front of his right foot, and almost simultaneously, he crumpled, making an extremely satisfying sound. I felt the thrill of it rush through me, the buzzing in my ears made louder by the knowledge that the guy'd had it coming for weeks now, and I basked for just a second before barking, "Aleksis!"

I got no response, other than Harris's whimpers as he reached down to grasp his injured foot. I glanced around, spotted Rod half-hiding behind an armchair, and demanded, "Is Aleksis here?"

"Um… um, I think he was sleeping?"

"I am here." I turned to see the man in question standing in the doorway, looking a little drowsy but otherwise entirely unaffected by the scene before him.

I pointed at Harris. "Take him to your grandmother, please. Get her to patch him up." As he nodded and went silently to pick Harris up off the floor, I added pointedly, "Tell him to pay attention; he might learn a thing or two about giving proper medical care."

Harris muttered under his breath as Aleksis basically dragged him out of the room, but he wasn't so foolish as to risk another bullet wound by speaking loud enough that I could make out what he was saying. I turned as they left, scanning the room for any signs of rebellion, anything out of place.

I spotted something: Ty, Stacks, and Deni, huddled in a corner and looking at me in a way that suggested they would -really- prefer if I didn't notice them. Once my eyes landed on them, Stacks swore, and Ty made as if to bolt, but the blood was still rushing in my veins, the sleep deprivation numbing any standard inhibitions.

"YOU THREE," I bellowed, and I liked to think it was the stern note in my voice that made them freeze obediently in place, rather than the fact that I held a loaded gun. "CRISS CROSS APPLESAUCE, ON THE FLOOR. NOW!"

I didn't know who I was channeling, some particularly stern kindergarten teacher from another life, but it worked. The three dropped to the floor before they quite knew what they were doing, going by the slightly baffled expressions they wore, and I didn't give them a chance to escape. I paced across the room towards them, sparing a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure Harris was on his way out and I didn't need to worry about an attack from behind. Once reassured, I returned my attention to the three suspects, sitting on the floor in front of me and looking up at me guilty as sin, and I felt my gaze sharpen into a glare.

I eyed them for a second, trying to decide the best way to go about extracting whatever secret they were keeping. I didn't think asking outright would work—maybe if I had one of them separate, maybe Stacks (I felt awkward around Deni, and Ty was hard to pin down), but as it was, they were together, unified, less likely to talk under pressure from the others.

Then again, I did have a gun.

I opened my mouth, determined to figure out what was going on, but was cut off before I even began by a bellow from the back of the building: "HAR- _LEY_!"

 _Oh, not now._ "WHAT," I screamed back, less a question than a pointed _fuck-off_.

"I NEED YOU!"

"Well, that makes for a change," I muttered rebelliously under my breath, but bad timing or not, I felt the familiar thrill I always felt at the thought that the Joker wanted me near. _As for the boys…_

I pointed at each of them in turn and, speaking softly and enunciating every syllable, I said, "You three do not move a muscle until I come back, or I'll beat you with a rubber hose."

I didn't wait for them to agree. There was a weird, nervous energy buzzing just under my skin, prompted by violence, the anticipation for a fight, and right now it had nowhere to go. I spun on my heel and stalked back to the bedroom.

I was in no mood for another menial errand, and I think it showed in my face, because of course, as soon as I thundered into the room, the Joker was right where I left him, blinking big guileless eyes at me, as though he couldn't imagine what could possibly have me in a huff. I put my hands on my hips and raised my eyebrows impatiently, and he answered the unspoken question—well?—by simply patting the empty space on the bed next to him.

 _Damn it._ He knew damn well no matter what I was in the middle of, I wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to get a little closer to him, so with bad grace, I accepted the invitation, climbing onto the bed and sitting beside him, back against the wall, shoulder pressed alongside his, and legs stretched out, same as him. I looked at our bare feet, his long and pale and thin, mine short and square and nowhere near as far away as his—they ended about halfway down the length of his calf.

Feet. Ankle. Right. I started to speak, to ask how the sprain was doing, but he spoke first: "Takin' care of business, babydoll?"

His tone was aimless and innocent and immediately put me on my guard. _Shit, what did I do?_ I thought, sneaking a quick glance at him out of the corner of my eye—his head was angled towards me, eyes calm and sleepy, which just made the warning bells in my mind ring louder. Something was definitely up. _Shit,_ I thought. _I fired three gunshots, maybe he's angry I didn't get it in one? Then I was yelling at Aleksis and the other guys right afterwards… he can't be mad at me for bossing them around, can he?_ I never could tell with him. Sometimes he was more than happy to have me bully his employees, especially if it meant he didn't have to deal with them, but he could get possessive of his things at the weirdest time.

I thought then that perhaps it hadn't been the best move to sit so close to him, and I started to edge away, but before I could do more than tense up, his hand closed tight over my wrist. Trapped. _Shit._ Unable to play it cool any longer, I turned my head to look directly at him. He licked his lips—hiding a smirk, I think—and mirrored my motion, meeting my eyes expectantly and lifting his eyebrows in challenge.

Telling the truth was usually the default course of action—even if the truth made him angry, it was nothing compared how he reacted when he caught me in a lie—and I didn't see any other option at the time. "I, uh," I began softly, "…quite a few of them have been acting out, so since I was dealing with Harris anyway…"

He nodded thoughtfully. "You thought you'd dole out some… _discipline_ ," he prompted.

I felt certain that saying more would dig me into a deeper hole, so I opted for a simple nod instead, going for "confident" and probably ending up somewhere around "tense." He nodded back solemnly, looking rather like he expected some further explanation, but when it became clear that none was forthcoming, he just asked: "Harris taken care of?"

I perked up a little, feeling like he was leading me back towards solid ground. "Per your order."

"Shot in the foot?"

"Direct hit. Blood everywhere." He made a noise low in his throat, a near-growl that I thought signaled satisfaction, and so I felt a little safer sidling closer and speaking up again: "And for the record, sure, the guys are scared stiff of you, but I still don't think it's really wise to turn our backs on the ones we've—"

He exhaled impatiently through his nose, and without bothering to wait for me to finish my sentence, he tightened his grip on my wrist and placed my hand in his lap, making it supremely evident that _satisfaction_ was right on the money. I squeaked in surprise, but before I could do much more, he seized me by the shoulder and pulled me over.

"Well, damn," I said through a sudden burst of laughter as he settled me on top of him, "I didn't realize _that_ counted as dirty talk."

" _Well,_ " he said deliberately, sliding a hand up through the hair on the back of my head and then tightening his fist, causing my breath to catch and making me see white for just a second, "you never _were_ the brightest."

Unexpectedly, the dig stung. Still feeling the buzz of adrenaline from the encounter with Harris, and still operating through a haze of sleep deprivation that made me less adept at controlling my impulses, I drew back and slapped him. Hard.

I should have been mortified, should have immediately started working on damage control. It was far from the first time I'd hit him. It wasn't even the first time I'd hit him during or leading up to sex—hell, he was as much of a masochist as I was; he _liked_ being hit. The difference was _that_ was playful, or close enough that I could get away with it, but _this_ was outright defiance, retaliation for the insult. He never put up well with defiance _._

I needed to apologize. He had one hand tight on my arm holding me firmly in place, the other still wrapped up in my hair, and it'd be _so easy_ for him to just jerk me forwards, crack my head open on the plaster and render me weak as a new kitten, ripe for the drowning. Even though I was fully aware of this, I couldn't make myself say the words. Instead, spurred on in part by the new sting in my palm that matched my wounded feelings and in part by evidence of his continued arousal right there between my legs, I upped the ante with a challenge: "You wanna say that again?"

His head had snapped to the side with the force of the strike, and he took his time turning it to face front again. There was a tiny bubble of red at the corner of his mouth, but he didn't bother to swipe it away, too busy looking at me with eyes narrowed in humor or anger or both. "Well, my, my," he sang throatily, slipping his hand out of my hair and running his knuckles down my back. "Look who decided to grow a _spine._ "

I narrowed my eyes, far from amused. _A year together and he's still spewing this bullshit?_ I was _not_ in an indulgent mood, so I shifted, moving to climb off him. Predictably, he wasn't having it—his hand flattened on my back; "A-ta-ta-ta-ta," he warned me as he slid down from the wall onto his back, using a combination of gravity and force to pull me down with him.

I caught myself on hands braced on either side of his head, unwilling to just give up and give in. "Oh, no, no," I said, brushing the tip of his nose rather aggressively with mine, "I can't think of any use you might have for a _spineless, dumb bimbo_ —"

" _Really?_ " he purred, eyes lighting with delight as he slid his hand beneath my shirt and ran his finger up my vertebrae. " _I_ can think of a few."

I scoffed, disgusted, half at him and half at myself for giving him that obvious opening, and thought for a second about biting him in retaliation, but he was clearly in the sort of mood where it would do nothing but encourage him. Instead, my tone as cutting as I could make it, I said, "Well, maybe _I_ don't want to waste my time with an _asshole._ "

"Harley," he said in his _let's-be-reasonable-now_ tone, which I _hated,_ "wasting your time with assholes is practically your _job description_ these days."

 _Fuck. He's got a point, but don't laugh._ If I laughed, I lost, and I was still feeling contrary and disgruntled. I slid down to rest on my elbow on one side, a move that put me nice and flush against him, and with a smile sweet enough to give him tooth decay, I said, "If you were trying to get a rise out of me, congratulations, you did it. Now would you let me go?"

He drew in a hissing breath through his teeth and rolled his eyes up thoughtfully. After giving the request a moment's consideration, he settled his stare back on me and said, "…nnnno."

He must have seen me tense up in preparation to pull away and bolt, because in the next instant he flipped me over, startling a squeak out of me as he settled himself comfortably between my legs. Leering down at me, he added, "Now, _why_ would I go through all that effort just to let you _go?_ "

It dawned on me then that he was having the time of his life, prodding and poking at me after a whole day spent lamed and bored out of his mind. I wanted to stay angry and sullen, to throw him off and bolt, but it was getting harder to maintain my resolve with the pleasant weight of him bearing me down, his hand slipping away from my back to jerk impatiently at the button on my shorts and drag them down my thighs.

I hooked an arm around the back of his neck and pulled his face down while he was otherwise occupied, brushing my lips over the bright spot at the corner of his mouth before kissing him fully and aggressively. As usual, the taste of blood just seemed to encourage him, and I just had time to wonder if the fight was effectively ended or if this was just an extension of it before he pushed into me, and I dragged him closer, realizing that it didn't matter either way.

* * *

The sudden, subconscious realization that I was alone and that I had no idea how much time had passed jerked me awake some time later.

We blacked out or boarded up the windows of the buildings we stayed in if they weren't already somehow obscured, so I had to scramble for a clock, only to discover to my dismay that it was after six PM. "Shit," I spat, and jumped out of bed, hastily throwing on some clothes before bolting out into the main room to see what inevitable horrible thing had happened while I was asleep.

It was worse than I thought. The main room was totally empty.

 _Well, not totally,_ I realized as I gave the room a second once-over after my original panicked scan. Ty, Stacks, and Deni were still sitting cross-legged on the floor where I'd left them over an hour ago. I went over to them, feeling equal parts guilty and baffled. "You guys are still here?"

"Yeah, like you told us," Stacks answered, obviously on the hunt for brownie points, while Ty simultaneously replied "Like _hell_ I was going down there with _them._ " Deni, as was his custom, stayed silent.

"Wait—wait, down where? With who? Where's the Joker?"

"Down _there_ ," Ty repeated impatiently, pointing at the floor. "With Spider an'nem."

I looked from face to face, uncomprehending. "They're all in the basement? What are they doing down there?"

"Uh, we don't know," Stacks said, "and I don't think we really wanted to find out."

"Right," I muttered, more concerned than ever, and turned away to find the stairs.

"Does this mean we can go?" Stacks called after me.

 _Oh, right._ I turned on my heel and approached them again, placing my hands on my hips and staring each of them down in turn as I spoke: "Yeah, you can go—as soon as you explain to me why you three have been slinking around all day, looking guilty as sin and running off whenever I come into the room."

If I needed any further evidence that there was something going on between the three of them, I would have found it in the quick, guilty look they exchanged then. None of them seemed keen to meet my eye or offer an explanation, and as we started pushing a full thirty seconds of awkward throat-clearing, I gave them a little push: "The rubber hose is still on the table, guys."

Stacks broke first. " _Shit._ We weren't doing anything bad, Harl, I swear."

"Dude, shut _up,_ " said Ty.

"We were just looking for the playbook!"

"Great," said Deni, breaking his silence as Ty sighed in exasperation, "now we'll never get it back."

I looked from face to face to face. When it became evident that they apparently thought they'd given me all the information I needed and so no more was forthcoming, I demanded, "What _playbook?_ "

"The D&D Playbook," Ty said, shoulders slumping and tone flat in resignation. "The boss took it from us a couple'a days ago."

"You guys… just want to play D&D," I said, testing the conclusion. It sounded as insane as I thought it would, but after surveying the assembled faces one more time, I realized they were in almost distressing earnest. I shook my head, trying to shake off the weirdness, and added, "And the Joker took your… handbook."

" _Playbook,_ " Deni and Stacks corrected me.

"Why don't you just buy another one? They can't be hard to find."

"Yeah, but this was an original," Stacks protested. "Nineteen seventy-four, mint condition. It belonged to my uncle." He looked at me with eyes that were suddenly wide and boyish. "You think you could get it back for us?"

Deni and Ty immediately started looking imploringly at me as well, and I stared back at them, unsure whether I should laugh or go find the promised rubber hose. _Dungeons and Dragons,_ I thought. _Who'd've guessed that our henchmen are a bunch of fucking nerds?_

"I guess it's better than Grand Theft Auto," I allowed begrudgingly.

Deni, with surprising heat, protested: "Grand Theft Auto is a masterpiece."

I scowled at him. "The storyline, sure, but you guys are too busy cussing out twelve-year-olds over GTA online to bother with that, aren't you?"

"Harley," Ty interjected, "the playbook?"

"I'm not making any promises."

" _Yes,_ " said Stacks as Deni and Ty, clearly thinking they were being subtle about it, fist-bumped; "yes!"

"I said no promises!" I repeated severely. "And _next time,_ come to me right away instead of making me think you're plotting to kill us all in our sleep, okay?"

This was met with a chorus of eager agreement; the three of them clearly were willing to say whatever they thought would get their playbook back. I rolled my eyes and turned away. "Stay out of trouble," I threw over my shoulder. "I need to figure out what's happening downstairs."

I had a pretty good idea of what I would find as soon as I opened the door to the basement and heard a dull roar of shouting men, accompanied by the thud of flesh colliding with flesh, but I still managed to be a bit shocked when I reached the bottom of the stairs and spotted two guys beating the bejesus out of each other, under lights, in the center of a ring formed by more henchmen.

It didn't take me long to locate the Joker, a lone, lanky figure off to the side, on his feet but still leaning on the impromptu crutch, watching the proceedings in absolute stillness. The sound of my movements covered by the small din, I slipped over to his side, where I stood watching the boys in the ring—Rod and Spider—whale on each other. After a moment of this, I said, "If you wanted to sneak away and start a fight club, you could have just duct-taped me to the bed."

For a moment, he said nothing, and I was just beginning to think he was going to just pretend he hadn't heard me when he said, "I have… uh, _no_ idea what you're talking about."

I snorted, then winced as Spider landed a particularly wet-sounding blow on Rod's face. "And you don't think having our boys beat each other out of commission might be damaging to our operation if we run into, say, bat trouble tonight?"

He glanced at me a few times out of the corner of his eye, then when it became apparent that I wasn't going anywhere, he flashed me a dingy grin that got nowhere near his eyes and said, quickfire, "Well, the _remote's_ missing, Harley—I gotta find some way to entertain myself."

"And you're doing that by forcing our guys to fight in front of you."

He pulled a face and made a dismissive gesture—"Yeah, yeah, yeah, less of the _judging_ —" and before I could argue, Spider was calling out from the ring.

"He's out, boss!" he said, pointing to Rod, who was lying prone, being dragged none-too-gently out of the circle by a pair of others.

"Oh, _well done,_ " the Joker called back, the warmth in his voice sounding almost genuine. "Now fight the big one. The uh—the rusky. Whatshisname."

"Aleksis?" piped up a voice from the group. "He's gone. Had to take Harris to the doctor."

 _Okay, that's it,_ I thought. The Joker had clearly all but forgotten my presence, already on the move to figure out who Spider would face next. I slipped away, heading back upstairs. _Time to get this house back in order._

Back upstairs, I was met with the eager faces of the D&D trio, but before they could ask, I said, "Not now," and stalked past them on the way to the bedroom.

It was a given that in any hideout he made his home for any amount of time, the Joker would have a closet full of weaponry set apart from the main arsenal. There were a number of unstable substances scattered around, but if you knew what you were looking for, it was some primo stuff, and I knew _exactly_ what I wanted: a handful of sticky bombs and a big, heavy case.

While I was rummaging around putting this together, I spotted a paperback book on a shelf nearby. Before tonight, I wouldn't have even noticed it, but now that I was keeping an eye out for it, it jumped out at me—an ivory-colored cover, bearing a simple illustration of magicians gathered in a circle. The bombs had gone into a messenger bag slung over my shoulder, I held the case in one hand, and I rolled my eyes, muttering "Nerds" even as I reached out with my one free hand and snatched the book up.

On my way back out, I pushed the book into Stacks' chest. "Don't bring family heirlooms here and expect them to make it out safe," I scolded, "and don't let him catch you playing that again!"

Book delivered, I headed towards the exit. "Hey," Ty called after me, "where are you going?"

"To do a job!" I yelled back, and stepped out into the blackness of the Gotham night.

* * *

"Yeah, hi, I need to place a pick-up order," I said into the phone cradled between my shoulder and my cheek as I set up my little crow's nest overlooking Olsen Street downtown. "Eight large pepperoni pizzas and two large cheese pizzas, please. Yeah, that'll be cash. An hour? Actually perfect. Yeah, of course—the pickup name is Ace. 'Kay, bye."

I hung up the phone, slipped it into the pocket of my hoodie, shot a quick, anxious look to the street below to make sure the convoy wasn't coming early, and returned to work, opening the heavy case I'd brought to reveal the gleaming parts of the gun inside.

My brushes with the law combined with dozens of stories from the guys had beaten into me a certain familiarity with the legal process in Gotham, and so I knew that freshly arrested criminals—especially muscle associated with various bosses around the city—stayed at the jail for about one full night getting processed and waiting for their first hearing, then usually were kept for one full day until all the hearings were done with, then all who had failed to post bail were transferred to Blackgate to await a proper trial. That meant our arrested boys were being moved tonight.

I owed the Joker for a lot of things, and not least among them was the valuable knowledge that getting one's way in Gotham City was a simple matter of pressure points. Everyone had them, and in a city as leaky and corrupt as this one, most of the people who could get shit done had quite a few. Bailiff William Jefferson didn't have _many_ weak spots, but the one he had was a _doozy,_ so I put in a call to him, dialing the number written in ink on the inside of my wrist.

He'd been really whiny, trying to put me off from the start: "I don't know, Harley," he said in those low, furious tones that told me he was probably huddled in the stall of a bathroom or the corner of a courtyard somewhere, trying desperately to avoid eavesdroppers. "They're not on my docket."

"Ah, shit, what a shame," I sighed, taking another look at the cheat sheet scratched on my wrist. "Cause the only way Laura isn't going to find out about Carrie is if I get the info I want. Or wait—is _Carrie_ the wife and _Laura_ the mistress?" I pondered this for a split second, then shrugged. "Doesn't matter, I can sort it out. But _you_ won't be able to once I've dropped those incriminating photos in Laura-or-Carrie's work mailbox, so I suggest you _find me what I need_."

There was a pause filled with white noise, then, sullenly, he said, "Let me call you back."

After half an hour of driving absently around, I received his return call, and he reported that the boys were scheduled to be moved in an hour, along with some various and sundry offenders. He gave me the route they were planning to take, and I groaned approvingly as I wrote the street names down lower on my arm. "Amazing what you can pull out of your ass when adultery's on the line, isn't it, Bill? Thanks a million; give Laura-or-Carrie my best." I turned off the phone before I could hear much of the spitting and swearing that followed it, and, whistling, dropped it out the window.

That information put me on a rusty little fire escape about ten feet above street level, assembling a lightweight long-range rifle (I had been informed by the Joker, loftily, that it was _not_ a sniper rifle; I still felt like if the shoe fit and you could take out a fly at a hundred yards, it counted) and overlooking Olsen Street, where the police vans were set to turn the corner any minute.

The job was a risky one. If it hadn't been so spur-of-the-moment, half-planned in the back of my head from some indefinable point earlier that day, I'd have backup and some more sophisticated equipment, but as it was, I was just going to have to wing it. There was a possibility that one or more of our guys would get hurt, maybe killed, but I doubted it. The charges weren't so powerful that they'd tear the vans apart.

I hoped.

It wasn't a busy part of town, but I still huddled low as I assembled the gun—didn't want some well-meaning tourist unaccustomed to Gotham's ways tipping off the cops. I got everything in order just in time: as I was settling the assembled gun on its bipod, I saw the police vans rounding the corner ahead.

It was just two vans, no additional escort. I'd planned for more firepower, but hadn't necessarily expected it. Prison transfers happened literally every day in Gotham, and there was simply not the manpower to set a squad car on a simple proceeding. Big bosses had better things to do than risk themselves or more men busting their grunts out during a jail transfer.

 _Like torturing their remaining numbers, for instance._

I gritted my teeth and sighted my target—a little red blinker, fastened to a manhole cover in the median of the road, where it was unlikely to get hit by the casual driver. I had a few backups planted periodically down the road in case I missed my first shot or something went wrong. I hoped I wouldn't need them. (Again—if I'd had more time, I'd have just programmed a simple detonator, but that was more the Joker's area of expertise anyway, and this whole thing was on the fly.)

I settled the crosshairs over the light and waited.

The first van cruised past. I waited until I could see the gap between the rear bumper of the first and the front bumper of the second, then, not thinking, not hesitating, I squeezed the trigger.

The subsequent explosion ripped a hole in the asphalt, the shot bomb detonating another charge stuck a little further down the manhole as it exploded. The bombs might not have been strong enough to blast the cars apart, but they definitely sent them spinning, taking out a few tires in the process.

I was beside myself. I'd had plenty of target practice since joining the Joker, but I'd never made a shot like _that,_ not on the first try. I hopped away from the gun, balled my fists, and bounced off the balls of my feet, squealing "Yes, yes, yes!" until the fire escape groaned and shifted alarmingly, reminding me that I had a job to finish.

I left the gun where it was—J probably wouldn't like it, but there was no time to break it down, and if he'd wanted to keep it, he should have come up with his _own_ plan. I shimmied fast down the ladder, landed at street level, and sprinted over to the smoking wreckage.

Someone was kicking his way out of the back of the police van as I approached. I stropped, drawing the little pearl-handled pistol J had picked up for me a few weeks ago during a raid on a GPD evidence locker and holding it steady. A huge guy I didn't recognize stumbled out, and I trained the gun on his chest—he froze when he spotted me. Behind him, I could make out motion, bodies moving in the van.

I met his wary eyes. "The Joker's guys in there?"

"Harley?"

That was a voice I recognized. Keeping my gun on the unknown escapee, I bellowed past him: "Ace, you son of a bitch, where's the _remote_?"

After some clattering sounds, Ace emerged from the van, followed by a few more faces I recognized. He squinted, blinking hard to get the blood from a fresh gash in his forehead out of his eyes. " _What?_ "

"None of us could find the remote, so the Joker started a fight club. You need to come back with me _stat_ before our entire workforce is laid up recovering from beatings."

The big stranger bolted suddenly, nearly startling me into pulling the trigger; instead, I checked the gun and yelled out "You're welcome!" as a few other strangers followed suit. I turned back to Ace and added, "That goes for you too, by the way."

"What, you're asking for a thank-you? You coulda killed us!"

I scoffed in disbelief. _Of all the ungrateful_ —"Well, _yeah,_ " I said at length, "but I _didn't!_ "

He shook his head and gestured at me with shackled hands. "We won't know till you get in the back of that other van; Doherty and Mex are in there. Get some keys for these fuckin' handcuffs."

"Keep being rude and you'll stay trussed up for the rest of the night," I said even as I headed over to the front of the other van.

The passenger cop was out cold, but the driver was stirring, trying to pull his leg out from where it was pinioned between the caved-in dash and the gearshift. When I wrenched the door open, he went for his gun, but I was ready, smashing the butt of my pistol into his temple, and he crumpled. As I searched him for keys, I glanced back through the barred panel and called, "How's everyone doing?"

"Who are you?" asked a panicked voice, while another, faintly familiar, said, "Doherty busted his head real good, Harley. We oughta go."

"Yep," I said, finding the keys at the officer's belt and ducking out of the van. "Coming."

On my way back to Ace, I pulled the back of the van open. As our men and the other prisoners filed out, I unlocked Ace's cuffs and pressed the keys into his hand. "Get the rest of the guys uncuffed," I said, and pushed past him to check on the cops driving the first van.

They were a pair of Gotham's finest, fully conscious but making no move to stop the bust, and when I opened the door and said, "Come on, smart guys, toss your guns," they obeyed without protest. I rewarded them with a beaming smile. "Stay put, 'kay?" I chirped, and closed the door with a bang.

By the time I returned to the back, our last guy was dropping his cuffs to the ground. Ace pointed to the pair from the other van—Mex was supporting Doherty, whose head had a wide, dripping gash in it. "See that?" he demanded.

"Ewwww," I said. "Sorry, Doherty, we'll get that patched up soon." I glanced around, getting a quick head count, and finding all of the arrested accounted for, I pointed my thumb over my shoulder. "If they hadn't called for backup already, they'll be doing it now," I said. "Are we, uh… are we ready?"

"After you, princess," Ace said, and the casual venom in his tone almost sounded pleasant in its familiarity. I saluted, then vaulted over the median, the boots behind me signifying that the fellows were following.

It was a short, twisty run to where I'd stashed the car, and the one I was most worried about, Doherty, made it upright, though he looked pale and dizzy.

 _Still alive,_ I thought as I tapped the top of the car, _that's what matters._ "Pile in," I ordered, and pointed casually at Ace as they started to obey. "You better find something to clean up that cut, cause you get to be the guy who runs in and picks up the pizza."

* * *

We weren't exactly hailed as conquering heroes upon our return home, nor did it put a screeching stop to the little gladiator trials in the basement—those were mostly done with by the time we all got home, the majority of the guys sitting around nursing busted-up faces and concussions. The pizza got more of a reaction than the return of their comrades, given that the hideout had been virtually out of food for days by then, and there was a general uproar as everyone moved to gather food and welcome the missing back home with good-natured shoulder slaps and punches and one decidedly not-good-natured skirmish between one of the men who'd been arrested and one who had not. Aleksis, who had just come back from Anfisa's, was dispatched to her place again with Doherty in tow. The whole hideout was suddenly a teeming mass of activity.

At one point, the Joker appeared in the doorway, presumably to figure out the source of the din—he showed up at the exact moment that Ace, miraculously, produced the remote control from the very couch cushions the guys who'd been ordered to search for it had been sitting on hours before. I'd have scolded them, but it wouldn't do any good, and besides, I was distracted by the Joker's presence. He stood in the back doorway, eyes racing across the room, taking it all in, and then, deliberately, they crept over to me.

I stared back from across the room, waiting stoically for a reaction. I could see him being irritated that I struck out on my own, brought people home he might have considered not worth the trouble, spoiled our men by getting them food rather than making them scrounge for themselves, but he could also—and this was a long shot—he could also be happy with me, proud of me, for branching out a little, for taking the initiative to bring more men back into the fold to the benefit of our little operation.

He said nothing, in the end. He just gave me this eerie little half-smile, black eyes softening up as his scars twitched, and then he turned and disappeared silently into the blackness of the back of the building.

Around that time, I figured I'd had quite enough for one day. If he wants to keep putting pressure on that foot, then fuck it, he's a grown man, I thought, and I did not sign on for two days awake, no matter how you look at it. I slipped easily out of the main area, leaving the men to their food and fighting and general rest, and I went to my favorite place to be alone in the hideout, a former apartment with a locking door, where I kept a sleeping bag and some pillows in case I wanted or was required to sleep somewhere that wasn't the Joker's bed. I locked up, curled up, and went to sleep.

By the time I woke up, sore from hours on end spent curled up in the same position and feeling like I'd slept for years, it was mid-afternoon, and all of the henchmen were either asleep or had cleared out. I took advantage of the quiet and settled on the couch to watch TV—The Rocky Horror Picture show had just started, and it wasn't often that I got to pick a movie without having to weather whining and protest.

About a half-hour in, a floorboard creaked behind me, my only warning before a body came vaulting over the back of the couch and landed heavily beside me. The couch creaked and shifted alarmingly, and if I hadn't been too busy jumping out of my skin I might have worried that it would collapse.

It held, and I glared at the Joker as my heart slipped back out of my mouth and down back to my chest where it belonged. "I take it your foot is feeling better," I said, almost accusingly.

He didn't bother to respond to that, eyes fixed on the screen, and after a moment, he pointed and said, "This is really weird porn."

I scoffed and crossed my arms, trying not to let him see how pleased I was. He casually reached around me to grab up the remote where I'd left it sitting on the arm of the couch, but left his arm heavy across my shoulders even after he had it in hand and changed the channel from Rocky Horror to GCN.

I didn't protest. I found that a good night's sleep had cleared up my irritation with him, and so I molded myself yieldingly around him, turning sideways and slipping my legs over his, leaning against his side. He was in an indulgent mood—at least, he pushed his mouth absently against my forehead even as he kept his gaze trained on the news, then turned and rubbed his scars against it several times, like he was scratching an itch.

Even though I had just slept, and slept well, I rested my head on his shoulder and relaxed. There would be more work and motion and frenzy later, when night fell and the men came back and the Joker rolled out whatever plan he'd been cooking while stuck at home. I would be wherever I needed to be, front and center, on the sidelines, or not involved at all, depending on what was called for.

 _Later_. For now, I closed my eyes, hand creeping across his chest to land on his heart and letting the quick, steady thud against my palm lull me again to rest.

* * *

 **A/N** \- To those who celebrate it, Happy Halloween! I apologize if this is all a bit sloppy technically; I was determined to post it today and had only a day to edit the draft, so I might have overlooked some errors. I'll try to tidy it up over time.

The Rocky Horror Picture show was playing pretty much on repeat while I wrote the last half of this, so it felt right to feature it. I genuinely apologize if Tim Curry bled through into this fic otherwise, but then, given the occasion, it may have been inevitable. "One million dollars" is cribbed straight from Always Sunny in Philadelphia. If you haven't read Matilda, you should, because Roald Dahl's children's books are horrific in a delightful way even if he was a pervy anti-semite in a not-delightful way outside of them. I love Steve Buscemi, but he's pretty repulsive in Fargo (movie, not TV series, both of which you should watch). The Britney Spears music video was, naturally, "Hit Me Baby One More Time" and it was playing during one of those "best of the 90s" music channel programming blocks. I've never seen The Expendables, but it seems like something guys who work for the Joker would enjoy.

Future chapters in this fic/works in the Bad Jokes 'verse in general? You betchya. When? No idea. I'm trying to finish up the next part of my other Joker series, and if you've been here a while, you know I'm a slow and easily distracted writer, the actual worst at committing to writing certain fic by a certain time. I do know that the influx of comments and messages I've received from a bunch of y'all recently definitely spurred me to throw this together. I genuinely appreciate the continued support and encouragement; reviews really are lifeblood and you're a particularly generous bunch when it comes to feedback and interaction. Until next time!


	2. Hard Knocks

**Two  
Hard Knocks**

The Joker was an open-minded guy. He'd try just about anything once, including, it turned out, meditation. Sure, it was far from his first resort, but he was in the middle of a sort of inspirational block, a _frustrating_ one, and meditation was supposed to help, make him feel level and calm.

So far, he just felt like an asshole.

Without opening his eyes, he announced, "I'm starting to think this Buddha guy may have been full of shit."

A beat of silence, then Harley said, "Oh, _right_ , I forgot that you're the undisputed authority on spiritual leaders."

He felt one ragged corner of his mouth crook up and quickly pulled his face into a frown instead. "Shhhhh. I'm _meditating_."

He expected a giggle, or at the very least a snide comment. When he got neither, he cracked a suspicious eye open, only to screw it shut immediately against the unexpectedly bright light. _When in the hell did it get to be morning?_ he thought, and, more prepared this time, he opened both eyes in an annoyed squint. When they adjusted to the light streaming in through the filthy, half-boarded window, choked but still bright enough to hurt a bit, he realized that Harley wasn't in the room.

 _Hmm._ He rolled his tongue slowly along the back of his bottom lip, eyes resting on the window. He'd _known_ this was a bad idea. He must have zoned out a little—which would have been _fine_ if he'd come back to himself with something _useful_ , but, searching his brain, he found it the same way he'd left it: flat, lifeless. Unlike him. _Exasperating._

He was sitting upright on the concrete floor of an empty, barren room on the edge of headquarters. Harley was nowhere to be seen, and yet he hadn't heard her leave. Hadn't heard her come in, either, truth be told, but he'd _certainly_ heard her voice clear as day just a moment ago.

He scratched idly at his shoulder, screwing up his face in annoyance for a moment when it responded with a dull little flash of pain—he'd healed about as much as he was _going_ to from the sniper's bullet, but the spot was still tender in the way bad wounds often stayed. After another beat, he rolled his eyes to the ceiling and climbed to his feet, lacing his hands behind his back and stretching out cramped muscles with a groan.

This wasn't the first time the specter at the edges had taken on Harley's voice. Sometimes it took her _form_ , too—always just out of his focus, usually when he was distracted. Call it an overactive imagination. He wasn't worried about it. _Harley_ would, if she knew, so he made sure she _didn't_. Easy. He looked around the room one more time as he shook his hands out to get the blood flowing, triple-checking to make sure there was nowhere she could be hiding, and then, in lieu of anything more important or interesting to do— _fucking block_ —he turned and went to find out where she'd ended up.

It was possible that she wasn't around at all. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't really recall seeing her in the last day or two—at least, he couldn't swear to it. He had the impression of her, but he knew by now that that _impressions_ weren't trustworthy. However, his first guess ended up being the right one, although he still wasn't _quite_ expecting what he found when he pushed open the door to the room he'd sectioned off as his quarters.

She was there, he could see the lump of her little body beneath the blankets covering the stolen mattress that served for a bed, could see the yellow of her hair peeking out above them—hair that was currently streaked with rust. That wasn't all: he could see from his position standing in the doorway that the pillows, too, were smeared with blood, not quite as old as the blood in her hair, a little redder, a little wetter.

There was a lot of it.

 _I didn't do this_ , he thought, frowning. He lifted his right hand, a loose fist, looking at the base of his knuckles—the bruising there was more brown than purple by now, close to a week old, the little splits below his fingers hardened over into scabbing. He'd taken a few swings at a mob enforcer that had ended up in the wrong alley with him (a few meaning more like ten, twenty). That was the last time he'd really had the opportunity to use his fists. _I didn't do this_ , he thought again.

"Harley," he barked.

Her head jerked up—she was still alive, then—but her face was turned away from him, and after a moment, she slowly lowered it back down to the bloodied pillow. She was going to pretend he wasn't there and hope he'd just go away, then, a tactic that had never worked out for her in the past.

It wasn't like he didn't have the time to kill. He tilted one shoulder against the door frame, stuck his hands in his pockets, and said, "Did you brain yourself on the wall running from another spider?"

He was mostly kidding around. The reason they'd vacated the last hideout was not _actually_ because Harley had discovered a black widow crawling along the couch and had practically climbed bodily onto his shoulders and threatened the entire household until someone had had the good sense to smash and flush the thing (the Joker himself had been too busy trying to keep his girlfriend from accidentally throttling him to go with his first hilarious instinct, which was to pick it up and put it on her—he'd actually _tried_ to throw her off his back, but since being on the floor would put her closer to the spider, she'd stuck to him like she was _nailed_ on), but so far, the new accommodations showed no signs of rogue arachnids, which was a decent perk, at least as far as she was concerned.

She didn't respond to that, didn't even move. The Joker narrowed his eyes and tried another: "Or were you, ah, ritualistically sacrificing chickens? Because while I love lawlessness and demonic pacts as much as the next guy, I gotta say, I can think of a better place to slit throats than in bed. Usually," he amended after a second's thought.

Another moment of silence, and then, finally, she spoke up, her voice muffled. "Sorry."

The Joker was having a hard time figuring out whether he was more intrigued or annoyed by this whole situation. He tilted his head to the side, and in a quiet, borderline friendly tone, he asked, "What are you sorry for, Harley?"

"Getting blood on the pillows. I thought it was just a runny nose, but I guess…" Her voice trailed off until he couldn't make out the words anymore, and impatiently, he cleared his throat. Interpreting the sound correctly, she spoke a little louder: "I guess it was a nosebleed."

Okay, it turned out he was _equal_ parts intrigued and annoyed. "I have _never_ seen you get a spontaneous nosebleed," he pointed out. "What, have you been dipping into the boys' coke?"

She snorted at that, and then, regretting it, said "Ow." The Joker decided he'd done enough coaxing, and stepped into the room, making sure she could hear his measured footsteps as he went over to her.

"So Harley," he said gamely, squatting down next to the mattress—although she couldn't see him, she could certainly feel his approach, judging by the way her shoulders hunched away from him, like she could ball herself up and escape his notice. " _I_ know I'm going to find out what happened. _You_ know I'm going to find out what happened. That's just the facts. The only thing you're accomplishing by stalling?" He leaned closer, one hand planted on the mattress behind her shoulders, and she flinched away at the pressure. He could smell the copper tang of her blood. "You are _irritating_ me," he said to the back of her head, softly and with menace.

She didn't react to the threat in his tone, but he gave it a moment—sometimes, the gears in her head needed time to turn, to convince her that he was right. (He'd think she'd have had plenty of practice by now, but she stubbornly insisted on thinking things through for herself rather than taking his word for it, every time.)

After a moment, with another wet-sounding sniff, she moved. He leaned back to give her a little space to sit up, and after another second, she turned to face him.

Her nose had certainly bled—the whole lower half of her face was coated in it—and now that she was showing herself, he could see why: it was broken. There was a little jut in the bridge that hadn't been there the last time he'd seen her, a split in the skin, and there were blue bruises forming at the inner corners of her eyes around it. The nose wasn't even the worst of it: below her left eye, over the cheekbone, was a veiny thundercloud of a bruise, severe and fresh enough that it was more of an angry, unhealthy pink than any other color. It was hard to tell what was going on with the rest of her face, given all the blood, but her hair looked like she'd done nothing but sleep on it for days on end, and he was pretty sure her top lip was busted on the left side.

He rested the undersides of his forearms on his jutting knees as he studied her. The circumstances called for a sympathetic (or perhaps admiring) whistle, but ever since his face had been cut up—specifically since the addition of the deep cut in his bottom lip—he'd been a shitty whistler, so he just hummed, low and thoughtful. Suddenly, precisely, he reached out and poked her in the ribs with his index and middle fingers.

Her reaction was every bit as quick and vicious as he could have hoped: she hissed in pain and nearly simultaneously reached out to shove him, hard, hard enough that he wasn't able to maintain the balance of his crouch and he fell backwards onto his ass.

He laughed, a short little cackle, and shifted to a slightly more stable position, stretching one leg out and drawing the knee of the other up. "Who worked _you_ over, huh?" he asked, moving past the little outburst of violence like it had never happened.

The rapid motion had cost her. She pressed one hand to her ribs, gingerly, like even _that_ hurt her, and aside from casting him a quick and hunted look, she didn't respond.

Instead, she struggled upright, getting to her feet on the mattress—it took her about three times as long as it should—and then edging around him, like she was worried if she drew too close he would trip her up and hurt her worse. It wasn't a bad impulse, all things considered. His eyes tracked her, unblinking, and she avoided them, _avoided_ them, and left the room.

So: _this_ was different. Harley accumulated her share of scrapes and bruises, of course, but he was usually around to witness it happening. This time, someone had knocked the shit out of her, and it had nothing to do with the Joker and the machinations that usually played a part in Harley's injuries.

He thoughtfully scratched the spot on his jaw below his ear, hearing the rasp of his fingernail against rough skin, and rose from his crouch to a standing position again. Harley hadn't shown any interest in running her own game, preferring her role in _his_ , so it was unlikely she'd run into some trouble on the side of things. Maybe a henchman had beaten her up—but no, that was impossible, she would _eagerly_ kill any of the boys who stepped out of line and laid a hand on her.

 _Although_ …

His forehead furrowed, and in the next instant, he was loping his way out of the room. The light was on in the nearby bathroom and the water was running—Harley, cleaning up—but he didn't approach her just yet. Instead, his feet took him into the common room, where the usual rotating gaggle of henchmen lounged, watching TV and cleaning various weaponry and waiting until they were needed.

They didn't notice him standing in the doorway till he barked "Fargo!", and then—it was funny to watch—they tensed up to a man, all eyes on him, waiting to see what he'd do, whether they were in any danger. He felt the buzz of their attention on the surface of his skin, that heady mix of their fear and their worship. It was better than any drug _he'd_ ever tried.

Fargo—nicknamed moments after the Joker had first heard him speak—snapped to attention. Jumpy with the mingled nerves and pride most of the boys displayed when they were the subject of his focus, he asked, too casually, "Hey, there, boss, what's up?"

The Joker didn't bother moving further into the room, just lifted a lazy hand and crooked his finger, _c'mere_. Fargo obeyed right away, hurrying to his boss's side. He was one of those guys who couldn't put on weight if you paid him, Fargo was, _painfully_ skinny, average height, glasses, hair and skin both so light as to be nearly translucent. He looked like he'd spent his whole high school career being shoved into lockers. Maybe he had—maybe that was the reason he'd gone out and become the best demolitions guy in a five hundred mile radius. The Joker didn't really care.

The Joker bent his head a little to loom closer to Fargo, aware of the tension still heavy in the room, of the henchmen pretending not to be hyper-aware of him as they waited to see what this was about. You'd think after weeks, sometimes _months_ of living under the same roof as him, they'd _relax_ a little, but—just like Harley—they never seemed to be able to quite get comfortable when he was in the room with them. He liked it that way.

"Fargo," he said again, keeping his voice low because he didn't know what this _was_ yet and his employees were terrible gossips; "has Harley been fighting with any of the boys? Hmm?"

Fargo blinked, his eyes magnified slightly behind his glasses. He seemed confused as to why _he_ was being questioned on the matter (it was because he and Harley weren't particularly close and he would be less inclined to keep her secrets, and he was also one of the rare henchmen who'd been hired for _brain_ instead of _brawn_ , which meant he may actually have _noticed_ if she and one of the others had been whaling on each other). "Uh," he said. "No?"

The Joker narrowed his eyes, leaning a little closer, conveying a mixture of the questions _excuse me_ and _are you sure_ without having to give voice to either of them. Fargo swallowed, his Adam's apple jerking along his pale throat. "I—I—I mean, she's always squabbling with Ace about _something_ or other, but I haven't noticed anything, ya know, _unusual_."

"Hmm," the Joker said, scraping his teeth meditatively along the inside of a scar. Again, Fargo was smart, which meant he wouldn't lie to his boss even to cover for somebody—he knew the _Joker_ was smart, too—so, after a cursory glance around the room to ensure that none of the guys present wore any unusual marks, the Joker crossed _henchman brawl_ off his mental list. "Find some vicodin; send it my way," he instructed, turning away, finished with Fargo for now.

He went back to the bathroom and pushed open the door—it slammed into the wall with a _bang_ , but Harley barely reacted, just shooting him a borderline insubordinate look from the corners of her eyes. He stepped just inside the doorway, not quite crowding her, slipping his hands into his pockets and observing.

She was leaning close to the mirror, examining her nose, prodding the skin around it and hissing in pain when it reacted exactly the way bruised skin tended to react when touched. She'd rinsed the blood from her face—hadn't bothered with her hair—and the cleaner skin let him see that her lip was, indeed, split wide open. Below it, her jaw was an angry mottled pink color that looked like it would purple up nicely in time. These marks were _fresh_ —old enough for the blood to clot, but not enough for the bruises to darken.

The Joker expected Harley to look out for herself, always had, and frequently took no notice when she was marked up or limping or sore from some injury she'd failed to avoid (if he _coddled_ her, then she'd never _learn_ ). Today, as it happened, he was on the lookout for a distraction.

"Okay, Ada McGrath," he began gamely, "you gonna keep up the act, or you want to tell me what happened?"

Harley didn't snort this time—she'd learned that lesson—but she _did_ make a scornful little noise against her teeth, _tsst._ "Oh, yeah, like _you_ care," she said, her voice hoarser than usual, tired. To her credit, her tone wasn't bitter, just sarcastic.

He reacted by folding his arms protectively over his chest and shooting her a betrayed look, as though he was wounded by her tone (even though she wouldn't look at him, she noticed his performance out of the corner of her eye; he could tell by the wicked little smile curling at the edge of her mouth before she ducked to drink from the faucet.)

"Harley," he said, "of _course_ I care."

She made a little gurgling sound beneath the stream, and then re-emerged with a groan, water soaking the neckline of her bloodied undershirt. " _Please_ don't make me laugh," she begged in a low tone, bracing her arms against the sink and still not looking at him. "It _really_ hurts right now."

Oh, but he _loved_ to make her laugh when she didn't want to—but before he could really seize the opportunity, another henchman careened on scene—Ty, always in a hurry to get everywhere, almost smashed into the door frame just behind the Joker before catching himself just in time.

"Ey, boss, Fargo said you wanted—" He cut himself off as he spotted Harley, and his face twisted into a look of shocked disgust. "Good _god_ , Harley, what happened to your _face_? Jesus _Christ!_ "

"Well, now, don't call _his_ attention," the Joker said idly, eyes flicking from Ty's horrified face down to his hand, where he spotted the expected little orange prescription bottle, though he made no move to take it.

At this, Harley clapped a hand over her mouth and loosed a strangled moan that was half-laugh, half-pained-complaint. Ty turned wide eyes to the Joker, who was quick to shrug in self-defense. "Hey, don't look at _me_. She won't say a word about it."

Harley removed her hand from her mouth and gingerly dabbed the back of a knuckle to her busted lip—it had started bleeding again—before she said, indignantly, "My face does _not_ look _that_ bad."

"Uh, _yeah,_ it _does_ ," Ty said, and the Joker freed a wrist from where his arms were still folded against his waist just so he could point sideways at Ty, a wordless _see? He gets it._

Harley glared at the two of them for several seconds, like she was trying to decide who to go after first. She settled on Ty, the easier one, and said, "Excuse me, _can I help you_?"

"Oh!" Ty lifted the bottle in his hand and gave it a shake—mostly empty, from the sound of it, but there were a few pills still left. "Vicodin. For the boss. Though I guess maybe it's actually for…?" He reached forward, offering it to Harley in lieu of finishing the thought, but the Joker intercepted the bottle before it could reach her.

"Thank _you_ ," he said briskly, snapping the lid off and shaking one of the rattling pills into his mouth. He crunched it between his molars, feeling it crumble, the bitter taste getting his salivary glands going.

Ty wrinkled his nose a little at the display, though wisely he didn't comment on it. "Yeah, uh," he said instead, "so, uh…?" He pointed his thumb backwards over his shoulder.

"Go ahead, Ty," Harley said. "Thank you."

" _Yup_ ," he said, and bolted. Harley turned back to the mirror, taking a washcloth she'd draped on the rim of the sink and soaking it under cold water, then touching it to her bleeding mouth with a wince. The Joker realized with a sudden wash of amusement that she was trying to _ignore_ him.

 _Well_. He'd never made that easy for _anyone_ to do, _least_ of all her. He swallowed down the last of the vicodin grit, then took a step forward, then two, close enough to her that if she wasn't careful with her elbow it would jab him in the stomach. He set the bottle with its two or three remaining pills on the edge of the sink, watching as her eyes darted down to it before just as quickly returning to her reflection.

Another step, and now he pressed lightly against her—stomach to her side, her shoulder to his chest. She went still. He didn't look to see, but he could see from his peripheral vision that her eyes were seeking his face in the mirror they now shared.

She could easily move away, he wasn't holding her in place, or lift her elbow a little and dig it into him in an effort to make him back up. She did neither—just held still and watched him in the mirror, awaiting his next move.

The Joker reached up with his right hand, fingers curling around the back of her neck at the hairline, thumb gripping her face just below her ear. With his other hand, he grasped a strand of her hair, and pinching it between his forefinger and thumb for a second, he felt the tackiness of blood not-quite-dried. He tucked it considerately behind her ear, then reached around and grabbed the other side of her face, using both hands to turn her head in his direction.

She sighed, barely-there, he only noticed because he was paying extra-careful attention, then lifted her gaze to meet his, suddenly mischievous, ready to play along with his game. "Honestly, you should see the other guy."

"Oh, yeah? What'd _he_ look like?"

"Hard to tell. Face like a geyser by the time I was through with him." She lifted her right fist, punching sideways across her chest and hitting him lightly in the arm. He laughed a little, an amused exhale through the nose. She was trying to charm her way out of this conversation. It was a good effort, but she should know by now it wouldn't work.

Still, no harm in letting the leash out a little, giving her a second's hope. He narrowed his eyes, tilted his head a little, and asked, "Did you, uh… already get someone to set your nose?"

"Aleksis. When I first got in."

 _Oh_ , he mouthed, nodding encouragingly. Then, abruptly, he said, "Y'know, an attack on you is an attack on _me_."

She raised her eyebrows, skeptical, and he couldn't blame her for it given their history, though he was mildly surprised to find that for once, he meant it. Maybe it was because he'd had no hand whatsoever in… whatever this was, that her getting the _shit_ kicked out of her was neither punishment for some little piece of stupidity nor a key element of some plan of his or the other, but Harley was the closest thing to a lieutenant he had, and someone going after her necessitated one of two outcomes.

One: he got rid of Harley for not being good enough at her job to avoid an ass-kicking. Now, maybe on a day when he was feeling whimsical, he'd go this route, but the simple fact was you couldn't do the work they did in Gotham without getting beat to shit every now and again, if only because of Gotham's resident rodent problem. He wasn't icing Harley, not anytime soon, at least, and not for this.

Two: he found whoever felt that going after Harley was a safe option and _routed_ them. If they were some rowdy civilians genuinely unaware of her identity (it happened—she didn't make the news as often as he did, and due to her lack of facial scarring was less recognizable without makeup), then they needed to get wiser to it; if they were players in the same game, then they needed to learn that sticking their dirty fingers into the Joker's pot was always a gamble, and one that wasn't going to pay off for them this time around.

" _Please_ ," Harley was saying. "Everyone who's come for me in the past? If I wanted them punished, I had to do it myself. That's been the rule of law ever since I _came_ here."

He smiled at her, disarming. "And, uh… what is it that makes you think you didn't just get to 'em _first_?"

"Oh, so this is the one time you feel like hitting the road dead-set on revenge before I do?"

She didn't believe him. He didn't know whether to feel delighted or insulted. He decided to feed her lack of faith in him—her surprise would taste better, in the end—and raised his eyebrows, leaning back a little, hands dropping to her shoulders and turning her whole body, now. "That depends. What are _you_ planning on doing about this?"

Her shoulders dipped, just a little bit, beneath his palms. She hadn't fully believed that he really took offense to the attack on her, but still, she'd let herself be flattered by it, just a little. "Right now," she sighed, "I just want to take one of _these_ —" her hand landed on the pill bottle, making it click—"and go back to bed for like, a day. After that, I'll think revenge, okay? Make sure that no one gets any fresh ideas about attacking _you_."

He nodded, _yes, those are acceptable terms_ , but when she started to pull back, he tightened his grip, holding her close. " _Oh_ , out of curiosity," he said, glancing off at some near-distant point past her head before dragging his eyes back to pin her in place, "if you're so sure I'm not about to go off fighting for your _honor_ —" she made another one of those sibilant, skeptical sounds, and he matched it, huffing a little laugh through his grinning teeth—"then why won't you tell me who did it?"

The amusement vanished; her gaze skittered away for just a second, long enough to tell them both that he'd hit a soft spot. "Hmm?" he prodded, and she took a little breath before meeting his gaze again, aware that she'd slipped up. She didn't offer him an answer, but that was okay—he had one ready for her. "Is it because you know I wouldn't like hearing what you were _up_ to? Hmm?" he asked, gripping her shoulders and rocking her back and forth, gently, just playing, for now.

To her credit, she managed an entirely believable smile, and shrugged beneath his hands, keeping her silence. He nodded, considering this, then sucked in an abrupt breath and ran his hands up down the sides of her arms, over the exposed diamond scars, feeling them scrape rough and pleasant beneath his palms. " _Well_ then," he said briskly, "at _least_ tell me you brought backup on this little, uh… secret _mission_ of yours."

She rolled her eyes, swallowing the hook, relaxing. "Despite the shit you say to me sometimes, I _know_ you know I'm not a dumbass."

He gave her an amused little look— _is that so_ —and she leaned forward a little, rising up on tiptoe so she could get more effectively in his face. " _Yes_ , I brought backup. Now can I _please_ go back to bed? This ain't gonna heal itself, you know," she added, gesturing in the general area of her battered face.

"Well, since the sheets are _already_ ruined," he said, and leaned forward before she could do more than scoff a little at him, pressing his mouth to hers and running the tip of his tongue over her ruptured lip, pleasant shivers shooting down his spine at the explosive, salty taste of her blood.

She brought her hand up, gripping at the edge of his open collar, and he leaned back, giving her a theatrically puzzled look, _what'd I do?_

"You better stop that," she said quietly, looking at the floor rather than him, "before you get me into any more trouble."

His mouth twisted up at the corner, wry, and he said, "I'm not sure you could _handle_ more trouble." At that, she _did_ look at him, her eyes above the bruised skin alight, amused and challenging all at once.

It was hardly the time to take her up on that challenge. He stood aside, tapping her on her hip. "Go," he ordered, and she obeyed, slipping past him like he'd burned her—probably aware that it was a _bad_ time for flirtation. He spotted something in her wake and rolled his eyes before barking "Harley!"

She'd just passed the door frame and stopped dead at the sound of her name. By the time she turned back, he was already tossing the bottle of vicodin towards her, and she fumbled to catch it, just barely managing before it hit the floor. Once it was secured, she gave him a brief look that made his scalp itch, like she was trying to cover up softness with knowing, and he pointed past her, irritated. "Go on, get outta here."

She was obviously feeling too battered to push her luck, judging by the way she was obeying him—she turned and vanished without argument.

 _Now. Time to dig._

To find the henchmen who helped Harley, he had to find the ones with bruises roughly as fresh as hers, which was easier said than done: brawls broke out regularly amongst the guys (truth be told, the Joker encouraged them—kept the boys on their game, kept their hierarchy in motion). Still, Harley had her favorites, and they seemed like an obvious enough starting place.

He'd already seen Ty, had seen that he was relatively unscathed. The Joker went next to go peer suspiciously at Aleksis, but the big Russian was good at staying out of trouble (the unsanctioned kind, at least), and didn't look like he'd taken an unreasonable amount of damage unreasonably recently, plus Harley had said he'd set her nose _when she got back_ , implying he hadn't been with her to start with.

Spider wasn't around, which the Joker marked as suspicious until his eyes landed on Stacks.

 _We have a winner_ , he thought. Stacks was sitting with some of the others in a room that had once been its own shoebox apartment, all of them playing poker and pretending not to notice that the Joker had been pacing around at the edges of the hideout. One of his eyes was freshly swollen shut, a wet red-pink color and about the size of a kiwi—in other words, the bruise was in its early stages—and though fingerless gloves covered his knuckles, hiding any potential injuries to his fists from the Joker's view, he was wincing whenever he laughed, good evidence of a battered trunk.

The Joker gripped the back of a spare chair, one of those wood-and-aluminum numbers usually paired with desks, and dragged it with him across the room towards the table where Stacks sat with his poker buddies. He didn't need to make a production of his approach; they were all carefully watching him out of the corners of their eyes to start with, but he had _such_ a gift for dramatic flair—it would be a shame to waste it.

He placed the back of the chair across the table from Stacks, then straddled the seat, folding his arms along the tabletop and settling in comfortably before starting. " _Hi_ there—uh, _Stacks_ , is it?"

"Uhh." Stacks's expression was a little hard to read, but fortunately, the overall panicked vibe of "I fucked up somehow" was easy to communicate even with only one functional eye. "Yeah?"

"'Yeah?'" the Joker repeated impatiently. "Or ' _yeah_.'"

"Yeah," Stacks replied quickly.

The Joker nodded along for five seconds, ten, letting the silence stretch out and get nice and tense, and only then said, "You rode shotgun on Harley's little solo mission earlier." He wasn't asking— _asking_ invited denial.

The other guys at the table were on edge, watching the Joker, glancing occasionally at Stacks to see his reactions. Stacks reached up to scratch his head, nervous, inadvertently pushing his beanie up and revealing a freshly-taped cut, more evidence of the little altercation.

"I did," he admitted. "Was I—was I not supposed to? I thought she could… you know, use the help."

The Joker stared at him, working his jaw laboriously from one side to the other as he tried to decide how to proceed with this. At length, he addressed the others without bothering to look around at them: "The rest of you take a smoke break."

They didn't need to be told twice, and for the next ten or twenty seconds there was a small cacophony as they pushed their chairs back and headed in a herd towards the door.

Soon enough, they'd all cleared out. Stacks was looking more dejected by the second, certain that he'd signed his own death warrant, though in a pleasant turn of events, he hadn't yet started stammering and begging for his life.

The Joker used forearm, wrist, and side of his palm to sweep imaginary dust off the tabletop in front of him, talking along with the strokes: "So… _Stacks._ Harley's back in the bedroom with a broken nose and a… _really_ fucked-up face right about now." A silent beat while Stacks looked guilty, and then the Joker prompted, "I gather getting beat to shit wasn't part of the original plan?"

"No," Stacks said immediately. "No. _God_ , no."

The Joker squinted in a good imitation of sympathy. "Got jumped?"

Stacks let out a little chuckle that might have lightened the atmosphere a bit if it hadn't sounded so scared. His hands were on the table, and he was holding still, like he was afraid to move, like moving might provoke retaliation. "No. The deal just went bad."

The Joker's brows arched high at that, _the deal_ , but Stacks gave another of those sickly little laughs and said, "Shit, _went bad_ , that sounds like there was fault on both sides. These guys were _too_ ready to fight."

The Joker frowned then, rolling his tongue around inside his mouth as he thought, sketching the line of his scars from ear to ear, then he cast about for half a second before spotting a pack of cigarettes one of the guys was doubtless kicking himself for forgetting right about now, open on the tabletop, lighter nearby. He shook one loose and stuck it into the corner of his mouth, then, as he thumbed a flame out of the lighter and sheltered it with a cupped hand, he suggested, "Maybe you should back up a little bit."

He looked up at Stacks as the tip of the cigarette flared to life, the ember's glow doubtless reflecting in his eyes like a pinpoint. Stacks was watching him, face clammy and pale. They both knew this was an interrogation, just like they both knew if the Joker heard something he didn't like (or _didn't_ hear something he _wanted_ to hear), Stacks was done for.

He swallowed with some difficulty, and in a voice that sounded uncharacteristically subdued, he said, "Uh—sure thing, boss. So Harley comes up to us earlier today—"

The Joker had removed the cigarette from his mouth after the first drag, and tapped his thumb on the table to interrupt. "Who's _us_?" he demanded, smoke gusting lazily from his mouth and nose as he spoke.

"Me and Deni." The Joker was taking another drag, so didn't say anything to that, just raised his eyebrows in a nonverbal question, _really_? Harley didn't trust Deni one bit; he wouldn't have thought she'd go for _him_ when it came to a semi-secret mission.

"Yeah, I mean—I think she was gonna ask just me and maybe someone else, but Deni was there, I said he should help us, it kind of… happened that way."

 _Deni_. The Joker made a mental note, and nodded for Stacks to go on.

"So anyway, she asked if we could help her out. She was riding along on a drug deal a friend of hers was running—"

"I knew it," the Joker said around the cigarette, "I _knew_ it. I _knew_ the whole 'plant lady' thing was just a cover for a huge grow operation."

Stacks blinked. Normally, he had a pretty good sense of humor, but it appeared to have vanished in the face of the strain he was under—he just said, "No… no, it wasn't the plant lady. It was that creepy doctor friend of hers. That—you know, the Scarecrow guy."

 _Well. This just keeps getting more and more interesting_. The Joker rested an elbow on the table, leaned his weight onto it, and licked his lips, fixing Stacks with an expectant look.

Stacks relaxed—just barely, not enough to feel comfortable moving beyond letting his shoulders droop a tad, but clearly relieved that the Joker not only followed him thus far, but was interested in hearing more. When he spoke, his voice was a little louder, a little more confident: "Yeah, so you know how he does those weird… fuckin' fear drugs? Dose somebody and they can't talk for screaming?"

The Joker nodded, a little irritated. He was working on a different type of aerosol toxin, one that prompted laughter instead of screams— _so_ much less boring—but he'd run into some serious problems during the test run last Halloween. Mostly: it was incredibly volatile, and not only had he lost multiple henchmen to it, he'd also accidentally gassed more citizens than he'd meant to—which, all right, was _funny_ , but it also wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to plan around every time he had something in play. He'd yanked the gas back for some further research and development, and faintly resented Crane for throwing his around so liberally. Inconsiderate, was what it was.

Stacks hurried, obviously worried he was losing his boss. "The deal was to sell some of that shit to a buyer, so the four of us loaded up—"

The Joker blinked in cartoonishly exaggerated confusion. "Crane was _there_?"

"Yeah." At the Joker's skeptical expression—Crane hadn't shown his face in a couple of months—Stacks doubled down, got a little louder. "We weren't gonna run his errand _for_ him. Not even Harley's _that_ friendly."

The Joker snorted and then shrugged as he took another drag. _Sure she isn't_. "So we went to the meeting spot, some… parking garage in Columbia Point. This was at like three AM, it was pretty dead, and there were six guys to our four, so we already knew we were at a disadvantage. Deni and I tried to tell her, too, I swear, but she said to let it play out. It played out, all right."

"Mm. How'd it kick off?"

"Crane was talking to the head honcho guy, and the guy… didn't like _something_. I don't know, he and Crane and Harley were talking kinda quiet. He went to draw, then Harley went to draw, then one of the guys punched her across the face, then Deni clocked him, then it was on. We were outnumbered, so we all took kind of a beating, but…"

The Joker, in a display of remarkable patience, waited for two or three seconds before pushing for more: " _But_?" he prodded sharply.

Stacks twisted his head sideways, rubbing an ear on his shoulder like it was irritating him. "I don't know. It kind of felt like they were _trying_ to hit her more? Two guys were definitely targeting her, and whenever I tried to help, another guy would come hit _me_ , keep me busy for a minute longer. We worked our way through most of them—by that point, the two on Harley had her on the ground, were kicking the shit out of her—and then we pulled 'em off."

"They were just hitting her?"

"Yeah. Yeah," said Stacks right away, hearing the question the Joker wasn't asking and shaking his head dismissively. "Like… they just wanted to kick her ass, man."

"Where was Crane in all this?"

"He sprayed one or two and then bailed in the car we came in," Stacks said, obviously disgusted.

The Joker giggled through his nose. "He spray the boss?"

"Not that I saw."

"Uh… _why not_?"

"He didn't come fully armed and ready to go, I guess. Show of faith, or something." Stacks's face showed exactly what he thought about that; the Joker was inclined to agree with him.

"So," the Joker says, taking another quick pull from the cigarette and exhaling fast, "you and Deni yank the guys off Harley, _then_ …?"

"We could have kept fighting, the guys that hadn't been gassed were starting to get up, but… Harley looked like _shit_ , boss. Kinda scared us. Deni made a break for one of their cars. I grabbed Harley and followed. Peeled outta there fast, drove around long enough to make sure we didn't have any tails. Deni wanted to take Harley to Anfisa, but she said no, she was fine, she just wanted to go home and go to sleep, so we brought her back here."

Stacks looked guilty, and the Joker, grumpily, thought he was _right_ to feel ashamed: Harley was always _so eager_ to force _other_ people to go to their grizzled old medic, but of _course_ , the second _she_ took with a quasi-serious beating she was ''fine.'' It was the height of hypocrisy.

Stacks was giving him a funny look. The Joker _might_ have been saying some of that out loud. He moved on.

"What happened to the boss?"

"Got in a car and got out of there pretty quick, I think? It was hard to tell with everything going on," Stacks said, apologetic.

"And you didn't recognize him."

Stacks screwed up his face in concentration, scratching the back of his head through his beanie, but the Joker recognized a performance when he saw one—Stacks already knew the answer; he was just pretending to think about it so his boss would be more inclined to take his word for it. "No," he said finally. "He was just some guy."

The Joker moved his hand in quick, encouraging circles, ash drifting from the tip of his cigarette. "What was he wearing? What did he look like?"

"Wea—he was wearing _clothes_."

"Are you being _funny_?"

"No!" Stacks said hastily. "No, I, uh—khaki pants, black jacket. Nothin' remarkable. He looked… maybe forty? Clean-shaven. Short hair, like a buzzcut. Taller than me, shorter'n you."

None of this rang any bells, but it didn't matter—enough people had been involved in the ordeal that there was no keeping it a secret for long. The Joker nodded, dropped the mostly-burned cigarette onto the tabletop, and ground his thumb into the cherry, relishing the little burn as he put it out. He stood, the chair legs scraping against the ground again as he knocked it back. He looked down at Stacks, who had gone tense again, palms flat on the table, awaiting punishment for his role in all this.

Maybe later. (Maybe not at all. The Joker hadn't parsed how he fell about Harley doing outside jobs, and until he decided he _didn't_ want her venturing out without him, he didn't necessarily want to institute a ban on anyone helping her. By Stacks' account, if he and Deni hadn't been there, things could have gone _really_ badly, and that would've just been _wasteful_.) For now, he just said "Hmm," then, without another word, left the room.

He didn't know where to find Crane, not at the moment. However, he _did_ know where Harley's hippie friend lived. It was a start.

He went back to the bedroom to grab a few things. Harley was back in bed, though she'd stripped the bloodied sheets and had spread a towel over the pillows in case she started to bleed again. He shook his head at the thought. Blood on the sheets was the _least_ of their worries.

She was either asleep already or she was pretending to ignore him again. He didn't really care either way, but he stopped on his way through the room, leaning over her, bracing himself with a hand splayed across the back of her head so he could bend down and give her a smooch on the temple. She made a weak little sound—he couldn't quite tell if it was approval or protest—and he scrunched at her hair with his fingers once, twice, before straightening up and resuming his task. _There,_ he thought as he headed towards the crates currently housing their assorted clothing and weaponry. If she wasn't sleeping, she'd be too busy wondering whether the little gesture of affection meant she was in trouble or whether it was just that—affection—to catch on to what he was up to.

He dressed down—black jacket buttoned over a plain tee, gray pants, lots of pockets for odds and ends. He traded out his more stylish shoes for a well-worn pair of steel-toed boots. He stuffed his hair into a black knit cap until every trace of green was hidden, then he yanked a black scarf from the pile: not his, almost definitely Harley's, but it would serve for his purposes. It was cold enough out that no one would glance twice at someone wearing a scarf high over their face.

He didn't suppose he needed much for this errand—a phone, a few blades, a little snub-nosed revolver, a generous handful of bullets, all of which he tucked into various pockets, neatly hiding them from view. He'd removed the paint to shave a day or two ago (probably needed to do it again; black stubble was coming in on the relatively healthy patches of skin around the scarring—it didn't matter for now) and hadn't been out since, so he didn't need to do anything with his face other than cover it up.

He took the keys to a clunker in the lot and hit the road without a word to anyone.

Harley's friend lived in Upper Chelsea Hill, unless she'd moved, and the Joker was pretty sure she hadn't—during his brief visit to her place a few months back, he'd observed the trappings of comfort, evidence that she wasn't in the habit of picking up and _leaving_ every few weeks the way he and his crew were. He might be wrong. (He didn't think he was.)

It was broad daylight, unusually sunny for late October, and the streets of the neighborhood were busy _ish_. The Joker parked the car down the street from Pam's house and joined the foot traffic after ensuring that his scarf suitably covered his face. Blending in in a city like Gotham wasn't hard: it was a place full of glaring, suspicious-looking figures; as long as you acted like you belonged and didn't do anything to _justify_ suspicion, people tended to mind their own business, at least south of uptown.

He didn't bother with the front door (it had been locked last time, and with his face covered it was best not to run up and check), just headed around the back of the place and dragged himself up and over the tall wood fence that bordered her little yard.

This place gave him the heebie-jeebies. He wasn't much of a gardener—black thumb more than green—but even _he_ could tell you so much fresh greenery at this time of year wasn't natural. He still hadn't ruled out a grow operation, though this shit was too colorful to be ganja. He picked his way through the yard, instinct telling him to avoid the flora as much as he could, and at the backdoor, after a quick look around to ensure that the fence obscured him from the neighbors' view (it did), he pulled off his cap, covered his fist, and used it to punch through the glass pane. He scraped his wrist on the shards around the edges as he reached through to turn the deadbolt, but to his disappointment, he barely felt it through the light Vicodin haze he'd worked up at this point.

It was dark indoors, curtains drawn to block out the rare sunlight, which seemed an odd choice for a crazy plant lady. Belatedly, he considered the possibility that she wasn't even home. He wasn't too torn up at the prospect: he had time on his hands, and while he was waiting, he could snoop around a little, see what Harley found so special about this person. He liked being in people's homes, their personal spaces while they weren't there. It always proved to be so _revealing_.

He was picking his way through the living room past the kitchen where he'd entered, figuring he might as well search the place before getting comfortable, when the lights flipped on. He shielded his eyes immediately from the glare, squinting and scowling until he spotted the culprit, a few yards away between him and the door, her hand still on the light switch, her other hand pointing a gun at him.

In truth, he was _really_ surprised she didn't pull the trigger right away.

He raised his hands above his head, slowly, the movement a little exaggerated. "I, uh… I come in peace."

That got a laugh, albeit an ugly, humorless one. He held still except for his eyes, which crept over the room and then her, looking for anything he could use. There was a couch between them that could serve for cover, if it came to that, and as for her, she looked… tired, sallow-skinned, dressed in sweats and a big green t-shirt riddled with holes, and he spotted the shadow of a bruise around her eye. She looked like she'd been _through_ something, didn't look _all_ that much better than Harley, come to think of it.

He narrowed his eyes, suddenly suspicious. He wouldn't think Stacks would have the guts to omit a detail as pertinent as a _whole person's_ involvement in Harley's scheme, but men could be truly stupid, sometimes, when it came to pretty women.

"Say," he said slowly, not too abrupt or sudden—if she was going to pull that trigger, it would be because he'd given her a _good_ reason—"you weren't riding along for Harley's _thing_ earlier, were you?"

Her eyes were like flint. _Oh, she_ _ **really**_ _hates me,_ he thought, feeling a little rush of glee. It was nothing new, someone despising him like this, but then, it never got old. "Thing—what _thing_?" she demanded.

He gestured faintly towards his own eye, a move that prompted her to pull back the hammer on her pistol. He pulled a frowny face, playing confused. "She didn't tell you?"

She smiled at that, a slow, coiling thing that might have given him the creeps if he'd been anyone else. Then she laughed, a little chuckle that was half contempt and half real amusement, and gestured with the gun. " _Get_ out of my house," she said in the same tone she might use to shoo away some neighbor's brat.

(The Joker wasn't sure what his face was doing in response to that. _Incredulous grin_ was the closest he could approximate. Even _Harley_ was afraid of him still—who did this woman think she was, talking to him like that?)

"Now… now, listen, Pamantha," he said, his tone as conciliatory as he could make it without veering sharply into overt sarcasm. "I know you and I haven't always seen, uh, _eye-to-eye_ —" she scoffed; the amusement didn't go anywhere near her eyes—"but I'm here on _Harley's_ behalf."

Pam's eyes grew wide and she nodded, suddenly serious, encouraging. The Joker realized with another sudden, vicious little thrill that she was _mocking_ him. That _was_ new. "Oh," she said, and laughed a little. "My mistake. _I_ saw that you'd broken into my _house_ , and now you're bleeding all over my _floor_ , so I assumed it was some idiot scheme of yours—but I see now: you're just looking out for Harley. As _usual_. Silly me."

 _Bleeding?_ The Joker stole a sideways glance at his elevated hand and saw that his wrist was, in fact, dripping blood, slow but sizeable drops splattering to the hardwood floor. "…huh," he said. He still barely felt it. That vicodin was good stuff.

He turned away and went back into the kitchen.

Despite the loose set of his shoulders, his skin was electric, ready to pick up on the slightest change of the air, anything that would tell him to dive for cover, and dive for cover _now_. Still, he had a hunch, and like most of his hunches, it proved correct: she didn't shoot him.

She _did_ call after him though, and he could tell by the sound of her voice that she was moving to keep him in sight. "I know I shouldn't be surprised—but are you _really_ so arrogant that you think I'm incapable of shooting you?"

The Joker risked a brief look over his shoulder, eyebrows raised like he was confused. True to his suspicions, she was on the move, sticking close to the wall so she didn't have to get closer to him, but edging along it so she could keep him in her sights as he entered the adjoining kitchen, carefully navigating the plethora of plant life stationed by the curtained windows. "In _capable_?" he repeated, turning his head away and smacking the light switch for the kitchen with his good hand. " _No_ , no, no. I can tell by the _look_ of you that you'd shoot me for a nickel."

"I'll shoot you for _free_ ," she corrected him, unwilling to let his assumption pass without comment. He turned back to her again, putting his bleeding hand to his heart—he was wearing black, it was fine—to indicate how badly she'd wounded him. Her upper lip hitched slightly in a sneer.

"How _ever_ ," he said, turning away in single-minded pursuit of his quarry, "as much as you might _want_ to, I don't think you _will_." He spotted what he was looking for—or something close enough, anyway, and snatched up a spotless white kitchen towel hanging from the oven handle. He used it to prod at his cut hand (now that he was looking, he saw that the source of the blood was the fleshy part at the base of his palm; he must've caught it on a shard of glass still sticking out of the door), ensuring that there was nothing still wedged in the wound. Once the prodding failed to yield any sharp pains from shifting shards of glass, to catch any red glints that looked more solid and less blood-like than anything else, he nodded and began to wrap the hand up tightly.

"Be nice to know what _you_ think is stopping me," she prompted, and her tone was as cold as ice. His back was to her, so he didn't really see the harm in smirking a little as he bound his hand. The stone-cold-tough act was bravado, meant to distract him from the fact that she _wasn't_ shooting, which… you could talk all you wanted; talk was useful, talk could impress people, intimidate them, dazzle them, but the Joker wasn't _people_ , and he knew the truth—without action backing it up? Talk was _nothing_.

"It's been, what, two? _Two_ months since the last time I visited this house," he said, taking the roundabout path to an answer and nodding decisively as he finished wrapping the cloth. It had done well to curb the bleeding, but a makeshift kitchen towel bandage was the kind of thing people noticed. He'd have to remember to keep that hand in his pocket.

(People were always, unconsciously or not, noting who among them bore marks of illness or injury, remembering those marks. Herds cast out their sick if they deemed them a threat, and while humans had trappings of civility to keep them from turning on the weak or ugly ones outright, the _second_ things got a little chaotic, that all went out the window.)

He used his teeth to pull the knot tight, but not so tight that his fingers turned purple. Then he wheeled around and headed back towards the living room, where Pam made a show of steadying her gun, as if she'd let it drift even a centimeter while his back was turned. He pointed at her with his bandaged hand and said, " _You_ are cozy here. You don't wanna move."

He narrowed his eyes and hummed in a questioning way as looked almost sideways at her, telegraphing that he was waiting for her reaction, waiting to see if he was right. He _knew_ he was—he didn't know _much_ about this woman, but Harley had indicated that she was living about as far outside the law as _they_ were. He didn't see a suppressor on the gun, and this was a pretty nice neighborhood. If a gun went off, someone would call the cops, and she'd either have to deal with some intense scrutiny or bail on her cozy little greenhouse here.

She didn't take long to answer, though her tone was as cold as ever: "It's a rent-controlled brownstone in midtown. Of course I don't want to move."

The Joker spread his hands, palms out. _Et voilà_.

She wasn't charmed in the slightest. If anything, she seemed more irritated, going by the way she bared her teeth at him. "So why don't you get the hell out of here before I decide I don't have much of a choice?"

The Joker let the little smile he wore grow a little wider as he watched her, and after a minute, he agreed: "Sure. Just—a couple'a questions… and I'll be _out_ of your hair."

"I'm not answer—" she started.

"Harley's beat to shit," he interrupted, dropping the smile and looking as serious as he could manage. "You should see her. Broken nose, busted lip, maybe an orbital fracture—I'm not sure. Whoever _did_ it was someone she ran into on this…" he grimaced—" _job_ she was pulling. Now, all I want to _do_ … is _find_ this person… and show them that she's nobody's _punching bag_."

He'd figured that appealing to her weird and transparent devotion to Harley was the easiest way to get what he wanted, but apparently, he'd figured wrong—at least, she burst into laughter, laughter with an almost hysterical edge to it.

"Nobody's _punching bag_?" she repeated, sucking in air and struggling to recover. "Oh, that's _so_ rich, coming from you. Jesus. The first time I saw her after she hooked up with you and she had bruises _everywhere_. Haven't seen her without at least one since."

"Look, we're both consenting adults, and what we do in the bedroom is—"

" _Stop_. I might vomit." He peered a little more closely at her, curious, because she _did_ sound a little barfy, but after a moment she recovered herself enough to go on. "Maybe you _do_ want to beat the shit out of whoever beat the shit out of _her_ … but I think it's more likely that you're offended that someone else laid a hand on her. Like a child throwing a tantrum because some other kid broke a toy he doesn't even like." She paused, waiting to see how this sank in, and when he didn't give her anything, she added, "Anyway, I can't help you. I wasn't there, and I don't know anything about it."

"That may be true," said the Joker, holding up one index finger. "But you know someone who was."

She looked a little taken aback, a little confused for the first time since she'd discovered him in her home. The Joker scrunched up his nose and helpfully, he mouthed: _Crane_.

He saw it click in her eyes, though she immediately looked incredulous, a little angry. "Jonathan? I don't even think he's _in_ Gotham."

"No?" the Joker asked, eyes wide and innocent, questioning. "So he… _didn't_ approach you recently, asking for backup on a job he was pulling?"

"Nope," Pam said, so deliberately and with so much eye contact the Joker immediately didn't believe her.

He stared for a second, then a few seconds more, giving her the chance to take it back, to be a person who _hadn't_ lied to him. When she didn't take it, he went seamlessly to the next thing. "Okay, well, _that's_ fine, so, why don't you just… give me his number—" he reached into his pocket for his burner phone, ignoring her short, snappish " _Hands_!", and flipped it open, pulling up his contacts—"and I'll be on my way."

"I'm not giving you his number, and I've had enough of you," Pam said, almost growling now. If he'd been anyone else, he might have found it intimidating. "Leave. Now."

He gnawed at the corner of his mouth and stared at her for another moment, then his gaze swept deliberately downward to the coffee table in the center of the room between them. A sleek smartphone lay on the surface. He looked back up at Pam.

She removed the magazine from the gun and ejected the bullet from the chamber, almost all in the same motion.

He was vaulting the couch when the gun—now empty—clipped him in the temple. (He had to give her perks for ingenuity— _throwing_ a gun sure was a lot quieter than _shooting_ a gun.) It wasn't a bad blow, really, especially with the vicodin still in his system, but it knocked him off balance, and he went into a half-sprawl across the couch, only one foot making it to the floor. By the time he struggled up from the too-soft mass of cushions, she'd darted to the coffee table and snatched up her cell phone.

He didn't take long to recover his feet. He lunged at her, still a little off-balance, his shoulder catching her at around thigh-level and knocking her forward. She landed hard on hands and knees, him not too far behind her. He grabbed at her leg, getting a grip on one calf and yanking her knee out from under her so she landed hard on her hip. She jerked, trying to pull her leg away from him, and twisted half onto her back, using her other leg to kick him in the face. He snapped at her bare foot, more to intimidate than because he thought he'd actually get a good shot in, and his instincts proved right: she recoiled, just for a second, but long enough for him to grab her other leg and flip her onto her belly.

She was taller than Harley, but less densely-built. To his surprise, however, she was about as strong—it took some more struggling as he hiked his way up her prone form before he felt secure enough straddling her back to go for a knife. With an expert motion of his wrist, he flipped the blade in place, and, carelessly enough that he doubtless scored the skin, he slid it beneath her long hair to rest against the back of her neck.

Her struggling slowed, but didn't stop. He rolled his eyes and said, "One good plunge, sweetheart, and this blade does irreparable damage to your medulla. Know what happens if I do _that_?"

"Go fuck yourself," she spat against the wood floor.

"Mm, that's right," he sang. " _Nothing good_."

With his knife hand secure around her neck, he used the other to grab at the fist she kept closed around her phone, and when her knuckles just whitened as she tightened her grip, he dug slightly-jagged fingernails into the back of her hand, pinching and bruising, pairing this with some pressure from the knife at her neck until she finally let go with a hiss.

He grabbed her phone and turned on the screen.

"Password?" he asked politely.

"It's f-u-c-k-y-o-u."

That wasn't even a good _joke_. He sighed, an irritated little burst of pressure from his nostrils, and he dug the knife blade into her neck. "I asked _nicely._ "

Maybe she felt the air on the deepening open wound, or maybe he'd managed to knock some sense into her with that tackle and she was just now starting to feel the effects of it. She dropped her cheek to the floor, and, surly, said, "Seven-one-nine-seven."

"Mmm-hmm," he said, typing the code in. The phone unlocked, and he pulled up her contacts, scrolling until he found it: _Crane, J_.

He dropped the phone screen-up on her shoulder and rummaged in his pocket for his burner, flipping it open. "You know," he said as he punched the number in, "your contact pic for him is really stupid."

"I know," she said, her voice a little muffled by the floor. "He hates it."

 _Okay, that's a bit funnier_. He chuckled, then, the number saved, he tucked his phone safely away and tossed hers off to the side.

Her eyes tracked the motion, then, sounding irritated and long-suffering and very tired, she said, "I guess it's too much to hope you'll just… leave now, huh?"

The Joker narrowed his eyes and screwed up his mouth thoughtfully, although she couldn't see the face he was pulling for her benefit. "Too _much_?" he repeated, holding the knife still as he went for his revolver with the other hand. "I wouldn't say so."

Grasping at his gun, he eyed the back of her head, and felt that familiar rush of temptation. If he killed Harley's best friend, Harley would be devastated. _Devastated_. It would likely unlock a side of her he'd never seen—a side he really _wanted_ to see. He had an opportunity here.

But no. The same thing he'd told Pam the last time he saw her held true today. He was leaving her alive, because—and this much was obvious, more so with this latest visit—having to live in a world where _he_ was also alive was something that would piss her off till the end of her days, and that was _hilarious_. Knowing that Harley loved him? That was just the grief icing on the whole cake.

He grasped his revolver, lifted his knife from her neck, and as she started to move, ready to fight again right away, he slammed the hilt of the gun into the side of her head.

She went boneless under him. He rose to his feet and climbed off of her, wiping the bloodied blade on the inside hem of his jacket. He glanced at the number for Crane one more time, debated sending the contact picture to the phone he was using just for kicks, but decided against it—best not to give Pam a link to his phone; he didn't want to ditch it just yet.

She was already fighting for consciousness after just five or ten seconds out of it, twitching slightly and making sad little pain noises. He was almost impressed—he hadn't felt the need to hold back. She'd be pretty out of it for a minute longer, probably would have pretty negligible control over her limbs for longer still, but he thought he should make himself scarce, regardless. He didn't want to get a flowerpot smashed over his head while he was trying to have a peaceful conversation with the mad scientist.

And if the number was wrong? Well. He'd just have to come back.

Ever mindful of his manners, he turned a little and said, "Thanks a mil, Pammy" to her faintly-stirring form. He waited for a second, but got no response. He clicked his tongue in disapproval— _some people have no sense of hospitality_ —and, wrapping his scarf around his face again, he left the way he'd come.

He got clear of Pam's house before making the call, returning to the car and reclining his seat, aware that this could take a few tries before it worked so he might as well get comfortable. Somewhat to his surprise, however, Crane answered the first time he tried calling, on the fourth ring. "Harley, I _told_ you not to call me from strange numbers."

"Not Harley, unfortunatel _y_ ," the Joker purred in answer.

He'd say this for Crane: the guy wasn't slow. He was releasing an exasperated sigh before the Joker was even done speaking. "Well, then. Looks like I probably need to talk to her about leaving my contact information lying around in a den of psychopaths."

Like Pam, and Harley before him, he sounded tired, and the Joker felt a stab of envy. All of these second-rate "criminals" were roaming around and having more fun than they could handle, while he was stuck home, aimless, fighting off cabin fever? He clamped the edge of his teeth down on the inside seam of a scar, tasted metal, and said, "Yeah. Uh-huh. Listen, Jonny, Harley's been beat straight to hell, and, uh, I'm on the prowl for someone to _blame_. You want it to be you? Or would you rather point me towards the guy that _did_ it? Hmm?"

"Well, aren't you the chivalrous one," Crane said dryly.

"You're the one who rushed to answer an unknown number under the assumption that it was Harley, pal," the Joker pointed out. "Feeling a little guilty?"

"Why on _earth_ would I feel guilty?" asked Crane, and oh, he was good, he had the smugness down pat, you almost couldn't hear anything else past it. The Joker was _better_ , though, heard the way he swallowed just before posing the question. He might not _want_ to feel one way or another about Harley's condition, but somewhere, maybe in some tiny little chamber of his heart, he did.

"Well, it was _your_ job, right? She was doing you a favor, coming along as backup. Then, when the goons went after her, you just… ditched her. She's down on the ground getting her ribs kicked to pieces, and you just decide to _leave_." The Joker made sure his disdain practically seeped through the receiver.

Crane was talking again the second the Joker took a breath. "That's rich talk coming from a man who left her with a broken wrist for the police this summer; abandoned her to Arkham for months."

The Joker laughed gamely, _hoo-hoo_ , "Who've _you_ been talkin' to, huh? Not Harley."

"No, not Harley—I assume you already know how tight-lipped she is when it comes to you. There are plenty of grapevines out there. The point is: you don't have a leg to stand on."

The Joker thought this over for a second, then two, tapping his fingertips along the back of the phone. God, even Crane's _silence_ was smug. Finally deciding that a mea culpa, however insincere, was possibly the quickest way to invite Crane's cooperation, he admitted, "So I haven't been the most reliable guy. I'm making up for it now, _trying_ to, anyway, and you can, too. With friends like us, when's Harley ever gonna need enemies, huh?"

(There was another option, which was to hunt Crane down like a dog and _torture_ the information out of him, and that sounded like a whole bunch of fun, and time was seldom as much of a consideration in the Joker's decision as his enjoyment was, but he was already starting to feel his patience with the whole ordeal waning. He wanted his real target, and he wanted him _now_.)

Crane was thinking it over; he could tell by how long it was taking him to respond. Finally, slowly, thinking out loud, he said, "I suppose… pointing you in his direction _would_ kill two birds with one stone…"

"Got a problem with birds, huh?" the Joker asked sympathetically. "Can't say I blame ya, not with a name like that. Probably tired of all the fowl puns at this point—"

"The deal was with a man named Tony Cardelli," Crane said, rather than listen any more.

The Joker mouthed the name, face scrunching up in distaste. "Sounds like a two-bit mob enforcer."

"Close enough. He's a dirty cop."

The Joker sucked in a breath through his teeth. "Ooh, my favorite kind."

"He's well-established in the GCPD. Pretty high up. About forty years old. He's been part of the force for twenty years, so you can imagine, he's got his fingers in a lot of pies."

"Mm, including the _fear gas_ pie, I gather."

Crane chuckled. The sound was tragically joyless, like he was out of practice laughing. "Afraid you'd end up on the wrong side of a toxin canister? Don't be. No one gets the really good stuff."

"Is that why the deal went sideways?"

Crane hesitated, then, with his usual bravado, the tone of a man who was never caught not knowing anything, he said, "Actually, Cardelli seemed to take issue with Harley's presence."

"Did he know you'd be bringing her?"

Crane made a negative noise. "I don't know how he could. Didn't matter. Whether it was because of her—" he cleared his throat pointedly—"unfortunate association with you, or simply because Cardelli doesn't think women belong in this game, he took badly to her."

"So you left her in the rearview. Got it, got it, got-it," the Joker chanted. The vicodin was settling into his skin now, not quite as easy to feel as it had been for the past hour. He wanted to _move_. "Thanks for the info. Next time I see you, Jon, I'm gonna take a few of your fingers. You know, to keep."

"Aw, I'm quaking in my boots," Crane said, bone-dry, and disconnected. The Joker brought the phone away from his ear and pulled up his contacts again, tongue flicking at the corners of his mouth beneath the scarf as he shook his head. Harley's friends seemed to be under the impression that they had some sort of immunity from him, presumably due to their association with _her_. He was going to have to take pains to correct that impression, and soon. The little twerps.

He made a few more calls to his associates and sundry across the city, and after another half hour of talking and waiting and talking some more, he had information. Lieutenant Anthony T. Cardelli, forty-two, worked out of a station in Colgate Heights. The Joker had a decent picture of him and a few tidbits of info about the guy's routine to start with. He was definitely dirty—if his age hadn't given him away (not many so-called "good" cops made it to forty; if they weren't killed on the job then they burned out fast in Gotham and were retired by thirty-five, with very few exceptions), the articles written about him over the years did. Many journalists in pursuit of justice over the years had pointed their fingers at him, highlighted the complaints of police brutality from his suspects, of sexual assault, of aspects of his lifestyle he would never be able to afford on a cop's meager salary.

The Joker _loved_ a good dirty cop. His mouth was watering just _thinking_ about it.

It seemed likely that the others involved in the brawl were Cardelli's subordinates—he had a little crew of hangers-on that seemed to do his dirty work with and for him—but Cardelli was the one who'd drawn first, and presumably the one who'd directed his men to target Harley. He was the head of the snake, and oh, the Joker was going to _get_ him.

He had too much pent-up energy to spend sitting quietly in a car driving across the city. He left the car in Upper Chelsea Hill and took the train instead.

He liked to do this when the weather and setting permitted, take the rail through the city, sit among innocent and unsuspecting citizens of Gotham. The train wasn't busy in this part of town, and he sat to avoid drawing attention, a little Chinese grandma at his right elbow, a pair of chattering students in hijab to his left. Nobody looked twice at his scarf, the way it was hiked up over his nose and just under his ears. Hell, the grandma was wearing a little surgical mask over her face; nobody looked twice at _her_ , either. The Joker loved flu season.

He kept his hands in his jacket pockets and sat half slumped and lazy as he glanced around, observing the people in the process of living their lives, though he was careful not to make eye contact. Harley'd told him once that his eyes gave him away—at the time, they'd just been made by a passing police cruiser even though he'd had his collar hiked way up and was hunching down into his coat, had to run and duck for cover and eventually shoot the cop _and_ his partner before they could make their escape. _Malevolent_ was the word she'd used, tracing the hollow beneath one eye with a soft fingertip before he'd slapped her hand away. He'd experimented with the idea once or twice since then and now believed, albeit grudgingly, that she'd had a point, though he would never say so to _her_.

He resisted the urge to flash his face at someone on his way off the car—it was more fun at night, anyway—and headed towards the station. There was a public library across the street. He found a seat next to a window facing the road, cracked open a copy of _Infinite Jest_ , and waited.

Now that he had his sights on someone, his patience had returned to him. The Joker was good at waiting. It was key to most good plans, as well as the majority of stakeout and stalking scenarios. Most people got impatient, tried to rush things, and that was why their plans failed. An improperly cared-for gun jammed; a target got suspicious enough to realize they were being followed…

… _or a clown gets tired of waiting for the boats to blow up and takes his eyes off his enemy to look for the detonator_ , he thought with an amused little exhale through his nose, turning a page. He was man enough to laugh at himself and his mistakes. He'd certainly told Harley often enough, usually when he had a knee sunk into her lower back and her arm in a hammerlock hold: _if you don't acknowledge what you did wrong, you'll never learn_.

His phone buzzed. _Speak of the devil_ —when he looked at the screen, Harley's name glowed there in bright blue, next to a little envelope icon. He flipped the phone open and opened the message.

 _WHAT are you DOING?_

His mouth twitched against the rough material of the scarf. He checked the street, making sure the station was still clear, then glanced back down at his phone. He typed an answer: _nothing._ She thought it was funny when he blatantly lied to her (though she _hated_ that she thought it was funny).

His phone went off, Starship singing the chorus to _We Built this City_. Harley had been playing a joke, which he twisted around on her by not bothering to change it. She should've known better than to pick a ringtone _she_ hated more than he _ever_ would.

There were a couple of hissing shushes, and he didn't need to look to know he was getting the stink-eye from a librarian or two. He silenced the call with the push of a button, then went into his settings and put the phone on vibrate—he didn't want to get kicked out of this spot just yet.

A minute after the call went to voicemail, another message came through: _pam said u were at her place nosing around for jonathan's info. wth, j? i told you i would HANDLE it_.

 _Pam's a big tattletale_ , he texted back.

 _NOT THE POINT_ , was her response.

He tapped at his phone for a moment, starting distantly out the window, then he fired off one last text: _go back to sleep, nosy nancy._

His phone lit up again with another call from her. He switched it off and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

The day crept on, the orange autumn sun sinking towards the horizon, and the Joker waited. Several hours went by, and he pretended to read, flipping page after page of Wallace's doorstop of a novel, and watched the street, and finally, around twilight, Cardelli showed.

He was leaving the station with a few other guys, most of whom—Cardelli included—wore a few fresh bruises on their faces. Bingo. He tossed his book onto the floor and rose to his feet, heading quick for the library exit.

The group headed west. The Joker followed them, hands back in his jacket pockets, giving them a head start of at least a block. They were loud and cocky, the way cops were these days, their job giving them blanket immunity to any consequences for jackassery, and a few overheard snippets of their conversation told him what he already knew: they were headed for a nearby pub.

There were too many of them for him to take on his own right now, at least if he wanted to get out of this with his nose clean. He trailed them to the pub, then split off to go find a car to steal, trusting the warmly-glowing bar to keep Cardelli inside for several drinks, at least.

He found an adequate car in a parking lot several lots over: sand-colored Toyota Corolla, 2005, no alarm, four-door, decent amount of trunk space. It was parked near the back of the lot, paid out for the next few hours, and aside from the usual city traffic, there weren't many prying eyes—it wasn't a busy part of town, and there were no events going on nearby. He hunched down by the passenger door, jimmied the lock, slipped into the car, tore into the steering column and found the thatch of wire there, and cut and pressed and the car came to life.

He moved it as close to the bar as he could, parking it next to the service entrance of a restaurant that appeared to have recently closed, then joined a small group of hobos around an oil drum fire at the mouth of an alley looking towards the bar entrance. The hobos were friendly, asking his name, offering him cigarettes and slugs from bottles contained in brown paper bags, but he kept his eyes heavy-lidded and said nothing, and eventually, they seemed to take him for one of the many mental cases wandering the city and left him to his own devices.

He passed a couple more hours this way, warming his hands over the flames as the night grew colder—hobos never cared about injuries; couldn't afford to be picky with their friends. Finally, Cardelli left the pub.

He wasn't alone, but many of his men had shucked off and stayed inside, leaving him with just two. The Joker jammed his hands back into his pockets and followed.

He followed more closely this time, awaiting his opportunity. The three men were drunk, or close enough, he could tell by the way they staggered and the volume of their voices, their laughter. It wasn't like he _needed_ the advantage, but he'd take it all the same.

They were headed towards the train station, he overheard one of them mention it—conveniently, in the direction where he'd left the car, though not heading directly towards it. He had just a couple of blocks in which to act, and when he spotted the busted streetlight lined up with a dark little residential alleyway, he felt his blood begin to buzz. _There_.

He picked up his pace. The men glanced back at him as his footsteps grew nearer, but he made as if to pass them, and they looked away, unbothered until he got right beside them, clotheslined the first two to throw them off-balance, and grabbed the third—Cardelli—by his collar, hauling him forcefully into the alley they'd just passed.

"Quick, quick, quick" he found himself muttering as Cardelli bellowed curses and the others recovered enough to come after him. Cardelli was getting his feet under him now, trying to brace against the Joker's pull; the Joker shoved him hard enough to knock him over and then turned immediately to meet the coming attack from his lackeys.

He saw the silhouette of the first one swinging at him and hunched, ducking out of the way. Something struck the brick wall above his head with cracking force, and the Joker drilled a punch right up into the guy's family jewels, left unprotected by his wide-legged stance. The guy howled and crumpled slightly, and the Joker turned his attention to the other in time to see the glint of a pistol.

He bull-rushed the gun's holder, one hand bracing against his wrist even as the guy pulled the trigger, throwing the shot wide, and the other hand at his throat, shoving him with such force back into the wall that the guy gasped and wheezed like his trachea had just been crushed. Maybe it had; the Joker didn't have the time nor the inclination to baby these guys. He yanked the gun from his hand and flung it into a dumpster a few feet away.

His blood was a roar in his ears. He turned just in time to take a punch from Cardelli—softened by the scarf, but not enough, and Cardelli hit him again, dislodging the scarf completely. It was too dark to make out the scars, the Joker gathered when he didn't hear angrier or more fearful swearing that he already was.

He straightened up, opening up his torso to another blow—Cardelli took it, nailing him right in the gut—but using the move to grab Cardelli by his shoulders and forcing him down into the Joker's knee. The Joker kept it up, ramming his knee against Cardelli's sternum, then his soft belly, over and over until Cardelli stopped resisting so much, then he pushed him away, hard. Cardelli landed on his back.

The Joker went back to ol' Family Jewels, who was just starting to recover from the ball shot. The Joker grabbed his hand, searching for whatever it was he'd hit the wall with earlier and found— _ah, yes_ —a steel police baton, which he had little trouble ripping from the guy's grasp, turning on him then, whacking him around the head with the baton until he collapsed onto the filthy alley floor like a bag of dirty laundry.

Trachea was still gasping for air, had fallen to his knees and one hand, the other hand clutching his throat. The Joker took the baton to his head next, whacking once, twice, three times, feeling a hot spray hit his face as something ruptured, and Trachea lay still.

The Joker turned to find that Cardelli was on all fours, trying to scurry further into the alley, away from him. He shifted into a run after him, channeling the velocity into a _solid_ ribcage kick once he reached him, getting the steel-toed boots _really in there_ and actually flipping Cardelli over.

Cardelli landed on his back. "Please," he gasped, obviously still unaware of who he was dealing with. The Joker struck him once across the face with the baton, and that did it: Cardelli was out.

The Joker was breathing hard, though he'd barely noticed until now. The scarf was somewhere on the alley floor, and he could feel a sheen of sweat covering his face, the October air cool against it. He licked his lips, almost convulsively, and tasted blood.

He wanted to laugh, to whoop and holler with the sheer joy of the fight and the _win_ , he felt it bubbling up in his chest like something nearly uncontrollable, but, with difficulty, he restrained himself. He'd probably already drawn some attention with this commotion, though it was unlikely to get him in trouble _yet_ —muggings and brawls happened every single night, all over the city—but pairing the sounds of a struggle with his distinctive cackle? He might as well just turn himself in.

He choked back the laughter—bits of it escaped here and there, through his nose—and turned. His eyes had adjusted to the dark enough to make out the three forms of the men he'd attacked, as well as a little lump on the ground. He went to it and picked up his scarf, shaking out any debris it may have collected, then wiped his face with it. He didn't exactly have a mirror on hand, but he did his best to get all the blood, then he wrapped it around his neck and face again.

He could smell the blood and sweat on the fabric. His eyes fluttered closed, just for a second, and he drew a deep breath, then turned to get Cardelli.

The adrenaline was still flowing strong, so he didn't have as much trouble hauling Cardelli up and folding him over his shoulder as he'd anticipated. Casual as anything, relying on Gotham's indifference to let him pass, he walked out of the alleyway, carrying Cardelli with him.

The lot was just another block south, and it was late enough at night that the traffic on the sidewalks had thinned. He got a few _looks_ from passersby—he presumed, anyway, he was still avoiding eye contact—but no one said anything. He reached the car, popped the trunk, slung Cardelli into it, and sparked the engine back to life, fleeing the neighborhood as quickly as he could without acquiring any more negative attention.

He turned his phone on as he drove. He had eight missed calls, all from Harley, and ten texts, all from Harley. He didn't bother checking them, knowing he'd hear from her again soon enough, and, true to his expectations, his phone lit up again merely five minutes into the drive. HARLEY, the screen read.

He flipped the phone open and put it to his ear. "J-j-j-joe's Mortuary, you kill 'em, we chill 'em."

"High school called, they wanted their lame opening back."

He giggled. "You sound like _you_ feel better."

"Try again," she said. "I've been pacing around for hours, worried sick." He pulled an unconvinced face she couldn't see, bobbing his head. She could say what she wanted, but her voice was much less hoarse, much more lively than it had been that morning. Worried or not, she was doing better.

"Well, what _are_ you worried about?" he said with an admirable attempt at _earnest_.

"Well, that's just the point, J," she said, her tone so biting with fake brightness that it made him smile. "I don't know _what_ to worry about. I just know that you're out there, _up_ to something, and so I know without a doubt that there is something I _should_ be—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, shut up," he said, cutting her off. "The drugs worn off enough for you to drive without dying in a six-car pileup on the way? I want you to meet me at the murder dock."

There was a second of staticky silence, then she said, "The murder dock? I thought we weren't using that anymore, you know, since so many _other_ people were using it and the cops were catching on."

"Not _that_ murder dock," he said, his tone adding an unspoken, scornful _obviously_. "The _new_ murder dock."

He could hear her frown in her next words: "The one near Cavalry?" He clicked his tongue in an affirmative, and after another brief pause, she said, "All right, yeah. I think I can be there in about thirty."

"Can't wait," he said, breezily sarcastic, and hung up on her.

He reached the dock in about twenty minutes, pulling the car right up to the edge. The area was a new stomping grounds for them, but, like many other places in poorer Gotham, it was ideal for conducting the sort of business they needed to run—once busy at the height of the city's industry, the depression had rendered it practically abandoned, and especially at this time of night. Any work lights or street lamps had long since burned out or been broken, and he killed the engine and the lights, sitting in the dark and waiting in silence. He kept an ear out for any noises from the trunk, but Cardelli appeared to be sleeping like a baby.

Eventually, he spotted headlights, and climbed out of the car to greet them. (Could be some nosy cops checking out the area, but he wasn't worried—he'd already beaten the shit out of some of their number tonight and certainly had a few more left in him. Anyway, the odds were better that it was Harley.)

Sure enough, the car pulled to a stop about ten yards away from his, and Harley popped out, leaving the headlights on to illuminate the scene.

He pulled his scarf away from his face as she stormed up to him, in a temper. "So guess what, Pam thinks you gave her a concussion," she said, stopping a couple of feet away and propping her hands on her hips, clearly working herself up for a good old-fashioned tongue-lashing.

The Joker rolled his eyes, thoroughly unimpressed, and took a moment to look her over and admire the mess of her face. The marks on her jaw had darkened to a purple shadow, the scab on her lip was bigger and blacker and uglier than it had looked this morning, and the big bruise on her cheekbone looked almost the same (which was to say: nasty). She'd taped a little strip of white over the little split in her nose, but otherwise hadn't bothered much to try to make the damage to her face look any less brutal.

"I've got a present for you," he said, not even bothering to acknowledge the Pam thing, because god knew once _that_ door was open he'd never get it shut again.

Harley narrowed her eyes. "Yeah, I don't care. We need to _talk_ about this."

He rolled his eyes again—for someone he willingly spent so much time around, Harley could be so _boring_ sometimes—and reached into the car again to pop the trunk.

"You can't _do_ stuff like this, J," she said, and then, catching the half-sly, half-menacing look he shot her out of the corners of his eyes, she amended the statement: "Well, obviously you _can_ , but I want you to _stop_. I need space of my own, y'know."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he groused, rounding the car, and, sensing that she wasn't getting through to him, she approached, her voice taking on a bit of a whine.

"A lot of shit goes on at the hideout, and, you know, I don't _mind_ , I _like_ it, but sometimes I have to get away, and I'm not gonna have to have a place to _do_ that if you turn my best friend against me. Which, _newsflash_ , tends to happen when you go and physically—"

He opened the trunk with a flourish, and Harley trailed off as her eyes darted to the form inside, partially-illuminated by the headlights. He watched her face, witnessing the moment recognition dawned for her, and she turned her face abruptly to look up at him, eyes growing wide.

"The _means_ aren't always pretty," he said, rolling up onto the balls of his toes and pointing his chin down to give her a _look_ , "but they're justified in the end, don't you think?"

Harley's lips parted like she was about to say something, then she thought better of it, turning again to stare at Cardelli in silence.

She was obviously stricken dumb by the grand gesture. The Joker took his cue and reached into the trunk, jabbing Cardelli hard in his already-battered ribs. "Hey. _Hey._ Wake up!"

Cardelli didn't stir. The Joker frowned and eyed him closely, confirming that he was breathing—he _was_ , but awfully shallowly, and even in the yellow bath of the headlights, his face looked a little gray. Annoyed, the Joker twisted his head to the side, hearing the satisfying _pop pop pop_ of his neck cracking before he looked back at Harley. " _Well_. I was _gonna_ have him apologize to you, but, uh…" He grimaced. "He's obviously in-dis- _posed_."

Harley still wasn't saying anything. He gave her a second, thinking maybe she was just coming up with the perfect words to express her gratitude, but she kept silent, and eventually his patience wore out. He slammed the trunk closed and brushed past her, heading to the front of the car again, where he switched the gear to neutral. Back around to the back of the car, he braced his shoulder against the trunk and pushed as Harley stood clear.

It only took a few steps, a moment or two of effort before the front tires rolled off the dock's edge and dragged the rest of the car into the water with them. The Joker straightened up, vaguely aware that Harley had come to stand beside him, and watched a sight that never failed to enthrall him, the car disappearing into the dark water, sloshing and bubbling and eventually dipping below the surface for good.

He felt… better. He was _frustratingly_ aware that his mind still felt stagnant, that this little errand hadn't given him the rush of inspiration he'd been half-hoping for, but his muscles felt loose the way they always did after getting a thorough workout, the pseudo-Harley was long gone, and he felt calmer altogether. Maybe the day hadn't been a _complete_ waste of time.

When nothing was left but ripples, he dusted his hands off. "Well," he said, turning towards her, "not _quite_ what I— _oof_ —" The rest of his sentence was knocked out of him by two armfuls of girlfriend; she twisted her arms tight around his neck and kissed him hard.

Eh, flowery grateful speeches were overrated. He put his arms around the waist and lifted her off her feet so she was a less ridiculous height and kissed her back till she leaned away from him with a pained, half-giggly "Ow, ow, ow"—the cut on her lip kicking up a fuss over the pressure—and he couldn't resist chasing a little, pressing his mouth to that sore spot for just an extra second or two and making her whimper a bit before smacking his lips against hers and setting her back down on the ground.

She kept her arms around his neck and beamed at him, so bright it was a wonder she wasn't scorching his retinas. "How did you—I mean—I didn't think—"

"Well," he said, tilting his head close to hers, " _You_ weren't in a state to do anything. I mean, look at you. How does it feel, joining the rest of us all the way down here in uglytown?"

"Shut up," she said, hissing a little laugh through her teeth. "You've never been ugly a day in your life and you know it." He pulled a skeptical face, eye squinting and mouth turned up at the corner, and she shook her head before standing on tiptoe again and kissing the tip of his nose.

He snapped his teeth at her, but she'd learned enough by now to have gotten out of range before he could make contact, and she slipped out of his arms, hopping a safe foot or two away. "I thought you'd be mad that was I was doing, you know… an outside job?"

Oh. Right. _Was_ he mad?

"No," he said at length, breezily. "Good for you to have a hobby. Y'know, get in some extra practice. Just don't let it get in the way of your _real_ work," he added, narrowing his eyes warningly.

She grinned at him, blindingly bright again, and then suddenly pointed at him, aggressive. "No more going to Pam's house!"

He tried to pull an innocent face, _who, me, butter wouldn't melt_ , but the effect was somewhat ruined by the self-satisfied smirk he felt growing across his face. Harley actually stomped her foot and pointed again, as if pointing _harder_ would ensure that she got her way. "I'm serious!"

"I am _painfully_ aware," he said drolly, and headed towards the car she'd brought.

"J," she said, whining a little again as she followed him, and he drew up short, wheeling around to glare at her and making her jump back with a little squeak as she nearly ran into him.

"Harley, don't, ah… ruin the moment. Hmm?"

She looked torn, her loyalty towards her battered friend warring with her love for the _batterer_ , but he didn't have time to take her hand and walk her through the useless conflict. He turned around again, going for the car, and when after a second he heard her trailing along behind him, he smiled to himself, just a little.

He climbed into the passenger seat, and a moment later, Harley slid into the driver's side. He busied himself adjusting the seat to allow his legs some more room, and after getting comfortable, he realized the light was on and Harley was using the rearview mirror to dab on copious amounts of concealer.

"Uh," he said as she tapped away at her bruised jaw, wincing at even the light pressure. "Polishin' brass on the Titanic, there, don't you think, Harleykins?"

"Maybe so," she said, her speech a little stiff given that she was holding her jaw _just so_ in order to apply the makeup, "but I haven't eaten anything all day and I am _going_ to hit a drive-thru on the way home. I don't want the girl at Jack in the Box to call the cops _immediately_ , just after we leave."

The Joker studied her for a moment as she moved her fingertips from her jaw to her disaster of a cheekbone, then grinned abruptly, bringing his scarf back up over his face. "E coli burgers? Mmm, count me in."

* * *

 **A/N** \- Here's an early Happy October (best month _best_ month). Thank you to marirable + one or two anons on tumblr who wanted to know how the Joker would react to Harley getting hurt for sparking this fic!

The bit where the Joker claims to be a shit whistler is a reference to the Gotham TV show (Jerome says something similar in season 4), as is the murder dock (Oswald hangs out there, like, every season to either kill someone or be "killed", you'd think someone would have noticed by now). There's a teeeeeny tiny reference to Beetlejuice buried in here.

I hope you enjoyed the read. Have a spectacular fall!


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